To All Who Are Thirsty - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Friday • 2/2/2024 •
Friday of 4 Epiphany, Year Two  

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 69; Genesis 24:1–27; Hebrews 12:3–11; John 7:1–13 

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 FourthWeek of the Season After Epiphany. We are in Year 2 of the Daily Office Lectionary.  

This morning, I find myself pondering two rich lessons, one from Hebrews about having a suppleness of spirit that fully receives the Father’s transformative work in our lives, and one from John about, well, letting Jesus be Jesus, and not projecting onto him our self-made plans for getting what we want.  

Hebrews. When our spirits are malleable and supple, rather than hard and resistant, we allow ourselves to receive the Father’s formative touch in any situation. The writer to the Hebrews knows that we may face hostility from others, that we may face all sorts of “trials,” that we may face temptation to sin, and, accordingly, that we may face chastisement for sin (yes, the Father chastens).  

We can know that in all of it, our heavenly Father is molding us after the image of his Son, “that we may share his holiness” (Hebrews 12:10). What a deep phrase that is. It is akin to 2 Peter 1:4’s “that you may become sharers of the divine nature.” One way to think of what the Father is doing in us is to picture ourselves on the far side of our deaths, waking up in a heaven in which we feel already (at least somewhat!) at home. We’re being shaped in the now to lessen the “culture shock” of that experience. Congruently, that process means the Father is using what he’s doing in us in this life to bring a bit of heaven into this world. #i.am.ok.with.that! 

John. The central message, I think, from today’s reading in John is that Jesus goes about his mission despite other people projecting their goals and aspirations onto him.  

“Now the Jewish festival of Booths was near” — John 7:2. The Feast of Booths is highly symbolic. It is the third of the three annual feasts that the law of Moses calls for: the Passover Feast marking liberation from Egypt (Exodus 23:14–15), the Feast of the Firstfruits marking the beginning of the harvest season (Exodus 23:16a), and the Feast of Booths (or Ingathering) marking the end of the harvest season (Exodus 23:16b). The Feast of Booths points forward to the great Sabbath at the end of time, when a world dominated by the power of sin (the age of the “flesh”) gives way to righteousness, peace, and hope (the age of the “Spirit”). This Feast is pregnant with typological significance for Jesus’s mission: his mission is to usher in the age of the Spirit.  

However, Jesus’s brothers remain as confused about Jesus’s mission as those who sought to make him king at the Feeding of the 5,000. They want him to go public with his supernatural powers. To Jesus, such expectations amount to ego-projection, and are, at bottom, disbelief: “So his brothers said to him, ‘Leave here and go to Judea so that your disciples also may see the works you are doing; for no one who wants to be widely known acts in secret. If you do these things, show yourself to the world.’ (For not even his brothers believed in him.)” — John 7:3–5.  

Jesus’s head fake (“No, I’m not going,” but then going anyway — see John 7:6–10) gives him space to go surreptitiously, and to choose the time and place of his Epiphany. He plans to manifest himself at this Feast as the one who will bring to pass that great future Sabbath when God’s Spirit will govern from sea to sea, and from pole to pole. But he’s going to usher in the Spirit’s rule in his own way (by being lifted up on the Cross—see John 3:14–15; 12:32–33) and in his own time (that is, not just yet).  

Jesus wants us to know that he’s not a cipher for anybody else’s message. He’s not an avatar in anybody else’s game. He’s not a projection of anybody else’s ego-needs. He brings the beginning of the age of the Spirit…his way. His death will lead to his glory, his glory will bring the Spirit, and the Spirit will gush like rivers of living water from Jesus’s wounded side, to all who are thirsty for real life. #i.am.ok.with.that.too! 

Be blessed this day, 

Reggie Kidd+ 

We Can Embrace Fearlessness - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Thursday • 2/1/2024 •
Thursday of 4 Epiphany, Year Two 

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 70; Psalm 71; Genesis 23:1–20; Hebrews 11:32–12:2; John 6:60–71 

This morning’s Canticles are: following the OT reading, Canticle 8 (“The Song of Moses,” Exodus 15, BCP, p. 85); following the Epistle reading, Canticle 19 (“The Song of the Redeemed,” Revelation 15:3–4, BCP, p. 94) 

Welcome to Daily Office Devotions, where every Monday through Friday we consider some aspect of that day’s Scripture readings, as given in the Book of Common Prayer. I’m Reggie Kidd, and I’m grateful to be with you this Thursday in the Season After Epiphany. Our readings come from the Daily Office Lectionary.  

Genesis 23: burying Sarah. Jesus chides resurrection-denying Sadducees for not seeing traces of resurrection-faith in the faith of their forebears. The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, he notes, is the God of the living, not of the dead (Matthew 22:32; Mark 12:27; Luke 20:38). In yesterday’s reading in Genesis 22, we saw Abraham receiving Isaac back, as from the dead — a mini-resurrection, one might almost say. And, in fact, the writer to the Hebrews does almost say so: “[Abraham] considered the fact that God is able even to raise someone from the dead—and figuratively speaking, he did receive him back” Hebrews 11:19). Congruently, in today’s passage in Genesis 23, we read how Abraham makes elaborate arrangements so Sarah’s body may rest in peace and naturally decompose, while her bones await their call from the dead. Jewish burial practices reflected resurrection-hope. 

Hebrews 11–12: eyes on Jesus. The writer to the Hebrews catalogues the way hope in the resurrection had sustained, fortified, and propelled hero after hero in the Old Testament. Faith enabled some to achieve great things in God’s kingdom (Hebrews 11:32–34). Faith enabled others not to succumb to withering attacks and discouraging defeats (Hebrews 11:35–38). No victory was final, nor was any defeat. All these Old Testament greats, says the writer to the Hebrews, were awaiting what we have been privileged to see: Christ’s victory over death for us and in us: “…looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, who for the sake of the joy that was set before him endured the cross, disregarding its shame, and has taken his seat at the right hand of the throne of God” (Hebrews 12:2–3).  

Earlier in his tract, the writer has noted that while we do not see humans presently enjoying the dominion for which we were made, we do see Jesus (Hebrews 2:5–9). He has reclaimed for humans the dignity we lost at the Fall. By virtue of his sharing our humanity and by virtue of his death for us, Jesus is “now crowned with glory and honor” in advance of our sharing in that glory and honor (Hebrews 2:9). By his death and resurrection, Jesus has “destroyed the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by the fear of death” (Hebrews 2:14–15).  

The result is that we can embrace a certain fearlessness in the face of external hostility, an unyielding determination to resist an internal drift toward waywardness, and a resolute refusal to heed sloth’s siren call to drop out of the race towards holiness. We can do all this because we see Jesus traveling alongside us, our Pioneer and the Perfecter of our faith, urging us, “Come on, stay with me! I’ll get you home!” And above it all, of course, are those who’ve already run their race, and they’re cheering us on as well.  

John 6: staying with Jesus. Jesus asks us to do no more than what he has already done. Every temptation we could ever face—to drop out, lash out, give up, or give in—he faced it too. Today’s passage in John shows us the nadir of his ministry. His refusal of the crown, his claim to be bread from heaven, and his demand that people eat his flesh and drink his blood—it’s all been just too much! To some, it’s befuddling, to others it’s blasphemous. Everybody is bailing, and so he asks the twelve: “Do you also wish to go away?” (John 6:67).  

One can only imagine where his heart is—for here he is, like us in all respects (save sin). His best teaching material has turned off (or confused) as many people as it has turned on and enlightened. With every word and “sign,” his portfolio of enemies grows. He is surrounded by doubters. Now his friends (through their spokesman Peter … and praise God for Peter!) say they can only stick with him because they see no better option: “Lord, to whom can we go?” Even while acknowledging their reluctant willingness to stay with him, he says he’s aware that one of them will betray him. Still, he does not give up on them…any of them. He does not yield to the temptation to quit. He does not forsake the mission. He does not stop believing in his Father’s faithfulness or the Spirit’s residing presence. He presses on. And because he does, so can we.  

Jesus is Savior to us in the most comprehensive way imaginable: he pays a sin-price we could never afford, he defeats an enemy we wouldn’t stand a chance against, and he walks beside us when we are at our worst and when we experience the worst. Jesus saves to the uttermost. Praise his name! 

Be blessed this day,  

Reggie Kidd+ 

Isaac: Pointing Forward in Dramatic Ways to Christ - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Wednesday • 1/31/2024 •
Wednesday of 4 Epiphany, Year Two 

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 72; Genesis 22:1–18; Hebrews 11:23–31; John 6:52–59 

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 Fourth Week After Epiphany. Our readings come from Year 2 in the Daily Office Lectionary.  

John: “the one who chews my flesh.” The great 20th century New Testament theologian Oscar Cullmann brilliantly lays out the flow of thought in John 6: Jesus draws the line from the miracle of the feeding of 5,000 people with material bread (vv. 1-13), to the fact that despite the ordinariness of his birth as a human he is the “Bread of Life” come down from heaven (vv. 14–47), to the miracle of the fact that as the risen and ascended Lord he manifests his presence among his people in simple bread that is eaten and wine that is drunk: “For my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink. The one who chews my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him” (v. 56).* 

Wonder of wonders: you and I commune each Sunday with the same Person who walked the shores of Galilee 2,000 years ago. And because he is eternal bread of eternal life, our fellowship with him will extend into a timeless, fully physical existence on a new earth and under new heavens. The Jesus of the Gospel’s historical account and the Christ of the Church’s worship and the Alpha/Omega of the coming eschaton are one and the same person—and altogether accessible to us.  

He came in the flesh. He comes in the bread and the wine. He will come again in power and great glory. Now, that is food for the soul.  

Genesis 22: the gift of an only son. Looking back on earlier revelation from this perspective, it’s impossible not to see the story anticipated repeatedly. Abraham’s testing on Mount Moriah is just such an instance.  

Abraham mirrors the love of God in being willing to give up his only son for the sake of relationship. Abraham also exemplifies utter faith in God’s promise to raise the dead to newness of life: “He considered the fact that God is able even to raise someone from the dead—and figuratively speaking, he did receive him back” (Hebrews 11:19).  

Image: Lucas Cranach the Elder , Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons 

Isaac points forward in dramatic ways to Christ’s saving death for us. The destination of Abraham and Isaac’s journey is Mount Moriah, which, according to 2 Chronicles 3:1, is the place in Jerusalem where God makes a plague to cease and where Solomon builds the temple. Mt. Golgotha, the place of Jesus’s sacrifice, is a stone’s throw away.  

Isaac is remarkably quiescent in the face of the unfolding of events: “…like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth” (Isaiah 53:7b). As Jesus will carry his wooden cross up to Calvary, so Isaac carries the wood for his altar. As Jesus will submit to the nails and to the agony of death, so Isaac submits to the ropes and is ready for the knife. On Mount Moriah, God substitutes a ram for Abraham’s “son your only son”; on Calvary, God will substitute his Son, his only begotten Son, for sinners.   

Nor should it escape our notice that everything happens “on the third day” of their journey (Genesis 19:4). By faith, Abraham does indeed receive him back from the dead “figuratively speaking” (Hebrews 11:19). And what a figure he has given us of the God-Man’s atoning and life-giving sacrifice!  

Hebrews 11: it takes faith. Because Moses is the Old Covenant’s “law-giver,” it’s easy to lose sight of the fact that he (no less than Abraham and other heroes in faith’s hall of fame), was driven by faith. Moses should never be thought of as the fountainhead of a project of merit, as the architect of a system of works righteousness, or as the standard-bearer for “judginess” toward the failings of others. “By faith he left Egypt,” says the writer to the Hebrews (11:27). “Faith” in the God of his people led him to say “No!” to the faux freedom of Egyptian court life and “Yes!” to the true freedom of life with Yahweh and his people through the waters of, and on the far side of, the Red Sea.  

I pray we too are able to live the wondrous mystery of “faith”: “Christ has died! Christ is risen! Christ will come again!” 

Be blessed this day,  

Reggie Kidd+ 

* Summarizing material in Oscar Cullmann, Early Christian Worship (London: SCM Press Ltd, 1953), pp. 37–38,91–102.  

The Only One Who Understands - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Tuesday • 1/30/2024 •
Tuesday of 4 Epiphany, Year Two  

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 61; Psalm 62; Genesis 21:1–21; Hebrews 11:13–22; John 6:41–51 

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 Fourth Week After Epiphany. Our readings come from Year 2 in the Daily Office Lectionary.  

Genesis 19: tears in a bottle. In today’s text from Genesis, the divine drama and the human drama seem to clash. Sarah’s laughter of skepticism turns to laughter of joy when Isaac the son of promise is born to her (compare Genesis 17:17; 18:12–15 with 21:6). But then there are the tears of Ishmael the legal heir,* left to cry himself to death out of earshot of a mother who cannot bear to hear.  

Image: Pixabay

I must have been four or five years old. I don’t remember what had transpired between my parents and me. What I do recall is sitting outside on the street curb in front of my house, with my arms around our pet dog “Tuffy,” and crying over and over again, “Tuffy, you are the only one who understands. You are the only one who cares.”   

“And God heard the voice of the boy….” — Genesis 21:17. I don’t imagine that a single one of us makes it through childhood without feeling something of what Ishmael felt. We’ve been left alone to cry hopelessly into the void. It doesn’t matter if we grew up with parents who did their best to love us, or with “caregivers” who treated us like worthless discards. We all, I imagine, know what it is to cry alone into the void.  

The thing is, there is no void. God’s got a bottle for every one of those tears: “You have noted my lamentation; put my tears into your bottle; are they not recorded in your book?” (Psalm 56:8). It must be a big bottle, for sure. A bottle the size of the world. But he hears. He does. And while we may think of God keeping a book on our offenses, the Bible says he’s keeping a book on our griefs.  

Despite the inattention of some of his servants (like Abraham and Sarah in today’s text), God gives ears to other servants to hear the crying. I give thanks for my friends whom God has called to make their homes into refuges of foster care and adoption. I give thanks for friends whom he has called to minister, through organizations like International Justice Ministry, to those who have been trafficked. And I give thanks for friends whom he has called to create bridges of understanding between the spiritual children of Isaac and Ishmael, those who work to find principled common ground between Christians, Jews, and Muslims.  

In the Bible’s way of thinking, as ignoble as Sarah’s motives are, she is correct to believe that God plans to redeem the world through Isaac’s line, not Ishmael’s (Muslim accounts, of course, differ). It was an ill-conceived plan that led to Ishmael’s conception, and it guaranteed tension between what Paul called “the children of the flesh” versus “the children of promise” (Galatians 4:28–29). Nevertheless, what is remarkable about Ishmael’s story is that God does not regard Ishmael as the discard that his father and legal mother do. Others had cast him aside, but God does not.  

Hebrews. As the writer to the Hebrews recounts the heroes of the faith, he characterizes them as having one characteristic: living their days as “strangers and foreigners on the earth,” while constantly seeking “a better country, that is, a heavenly one” (Hebrews 11:12,16). There is a stubborn trust that no matter how incomprehensible the circumstance or instruction, there’s always a redemptive end: Abraham intuits that Isaac’s end must be resurrection. Joseph understands Israel’s sojourn in Egypt is prelude to their exodus.  

The challenge for us is to respect the fact that on any given day we see only partially what the point of that day is. Loving a difficult child, doing seemingly meaningless work for a less than appreciative boss — we just don’t have the cosmic perspective to see how our faithful obedience is being woven into a rich tapestry of redemption. But “by faith,” we know somehow it is. May that be enough for this day’s journey! 

John. At the heart of it all is “faith” that a mere carpenter’s son (“Is this not Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know?”) did in fact “come down from heaven,” that he is in truth “living bread,” and that “Whoever eats this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.” Crazy! Really, certifiably crazy … or crazy true!  

Be blessed this day, 

Reggie Kidd+ 

* Because Abraham is eighty-six when Ishmael is born and one hundred when Isaac is born, Ishmael is in his teens when he and his mother are sent away (compare Genesis 16:16 with 21:5). 

His Need for the Mercy of Yahweh - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Monday • 1/29/2024 •
Monday of 4 Epiphany, Year Two  

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 56; Psalm 57; Genesis 19:1–17(18–23)24–29; Hebrews 11:1–12; John 6:27–40 

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 Fourth Week After Epiphany, in Year Two of the Daily Office Readings.  

“There are two ways, one of life and one of death, and there is a great difference between these two ways.” So begins The Didache, a guide that 1st-century Jewish Christians developed to introduce newly converted Gentile believers to the basics of their new life in Christ.* The statement crystallizes a life-premise that runs from Psalm 1’s contrast between “the way of the righteous” and “the way of the wicked” (Psalm 1:6) to Jeremiah’s, “…setting before you the way of life and the way of death” (Jeremiah 21:8).  

Today’s reading in Genesis 19 illustrates graphically and horribly “the way of the wicked.” By contrast, today’s reading in Hebrews 11 illustrates crisply and elegantly “the way of the righteous.”  

Genesis: the way of the wicked. In Genesis 18, Yahweh promised he would spare Sodom and Gomorrah if ten righteous people could be found. The text of Genesis 19 goes out of its way to stress that each and every male individual of Sodom and Gomorrah is corrupt beyond comprehension: they attempt to force sex with the visiting messengers, a violation of universal laws of hospitality and certainly of Jewish scruples about sex and rape.  

Lot has worked hard to win a place in the city: at first, he had merely “pitched his tents near Sodom;” then, he had “settled in Sodom;” and eventually, he had earned a place of “sitting in the gate” where he could participate in civic affairs (Genesis 13:12; 14:12; 19:1). But Sodomites never let him fully “in.” To them, he is still an outsider. When he protests the Sodomites’ demand that he let them have their way with his guests, they shout, “This fellow came here as an alien, and he would play the judge! Now we will deal worse with you than with them” (Genesis 19:9).  

Lot’s lamentable willingness to surrender his daughters to the violent and lustful mob and his pathetic reticence to leave so corrupt a place illustrate how deep is his need for the mercy of Yahweh. He’s become so accustomed to the “way of wickedness” that it’s only God’s determined love that can pluck him out: “But [Lot] lingered; so the [messengers] seized him and his wife and his two daughters by the hand, the LORD being merciful to him, and they brought him out and left him outside the city” (Genesis 19:16). Lord, have mercy! Who doesn’t see a bit of themselves in this portrait? 

Image: Picu Pătruţ, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons, The Romanian Peasant Museum, 1842 

Hebrews 11: the way of the righteous. The right path in life is “faith.” To be sure, faith proves itself by actions: “By faith Abel offered … By faith Noah … built an ark … By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to set out … By faith he stayed … in the land he had been promised … By faith he received power of procreation….” But in its essence, faith is more a direction of the heart than it is an accumulation of deeds. It is the disposition of receptivity, an intuition that from the other side of ordinary, everyday existence there is a Reality, in fact, a Presence, that shines through.  

The writer to the Hebrews declares that faith is a trust that God exists and that he “rewards those who seek him” (Hebrews 11:6)—rewards them with a taste of supernal pleasure, with the sound of angels’ wings, with a vision of blessedness, with the scent of holiness, and with the touch of a hand from another country (thank you, C. S. Lewis). Faith is a knowing in your “knower” truths not available to the senses: “the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen” (Hebrews 11:1).   

John 6: faith in the Bread from heaven. In C. S. Lewis’s The Pilgrim’s Regress, the pilgrim’s journey begins with the vague sense that there is an island somewhere to which he needs to get. That’s a lot of what faith is: an instinct, an intuition, an itch of the inner being that puts you on a path towards something you suspect is wondrous. The Bible says, “Follow that path, and delight will meet you.” Oops, nope, it actually says, “Delight will meet you, for Delight has already set out for you.” In fact, He describes Himself as “Bread from Heaven.” It’s in John 6 that perhaps more clearly than anywhere in Scripture the God of the Island of Delight says: “I’ve come to be food for your soul.”  

Be blessed this day,  

Reggie Kidd+ 

* Adopting the analysis of Aaron Milavec, in his The Didache: Text, Translation, Analysis, and Commentary (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2003).  

Holy Amnesia! - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Friday • 1/26/2024 •
Friday of 3 Epiphany, Year Two  

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 40; Psalm 54; Genesis 17:15–27; Hebrews 10:11–25; John 6:1–15 

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 Third Week of the Season After Epiphany. We are in Year 2 of the Daily Office Lectionary.  

Wisdom from Hebrews 

One and done. “For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are sanctified” — Hebrews 10:14. Seldom does Scripture bring the breathtaking scope of salvation into such sharp focus, a salvation that is past, present, and future.  

Christ made a single offering of himself (“for by a single sacrifice”) in the past to cover our sin. Therefore, a perfection or completeness of our humanity will be ours forever (“for all time”) after the Lord returns in glory. But even in the meantime, the writer can assert that we already stand in that perfection or maturity in God’s eyes (“he has perfected”). And in this meantime, we are in the process of being transformed in the direction of that perfection or maturity; the last phrase is more accurately rendered in the progressive present tense: “…those who are being sanctified (hagiazomenoi).”  

There is a past, present, and future to our salvation that mirrors the great confession of faith: “Christ has died (he won our forgiveness). Christ is risen (he lives to sanctify us by his Spirit). Christ will come again (he will bring us to the perfection of resurrection).” Praise be!   

Holy amnesia! “I will remember their sins and their lawless deeds no more” — Hebrews 10:17. In this verse, the writer to the Hebrews quotes Jeremiah 31:34. That verse takes its place in a cluster of Old Testament verses that describe a final and definitive putting away of our sin: “… you have cast all my sins behind your back (Isaiah 38:17b) … I, I am He who blots out your transgressions for my own sake, and I will not remember your sins (Isaiah 43:25) … You will cast all our sins into the depths of the sea (Micah 7:19b) … as far as the east is from the west, so far he removes our transgressions from us” (Psalm 103:12). As otherwise irreverently unhelpful as this simile sounds initially, it is as though the omniscient, eternity-inhabiting, creator-of-time-itself God of the universe, by virtue of the Cross of Christ, comes down with Alzheimer’s Disease in this one respect: he just can’t remember us as sinners! Praise be! 

Image: ABC Television, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons 

In sync. “…let us approach with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water” — Hebrews 10:22. What’s especially lovely in this verse is the wedding of external and internal. The notion of approaching (I’m reminded of the act of coming forward for Communion) and the idea of bodies being washed (baptism, of course) are physical acts.  

Each of these physical acts is paired with something internal. We dare to approach because faith in who God is, and what he has done for us in Christ, gives us confidence that we are welcome. We desire to approach because deep in our innermost being, our “heart,” we know that here in God’s presence is the only love that will ever satisfy. We give our bodies over to the waters of baptism with the confident prayer that God will do what only God can do: grant our inner being a liberating sense that we have been cleansed. While our heads can tell us that God no longer holds our offenses against us (see verse 17 above), deep down in our guts we need an intuitive conviction that we are no longer dirty. Praise be! 

It’s a together thing. “And let us consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds, not neglecting to meet together…” — Hebrews 10:24. Just as external practices and internal reflection reinforce each other, so it is with individual and corporate experience. I need you to prompt me to believe, and I depend on you to inspire me to love. You need me for the same. A friend used to tell me, “There are no Lone Ranger Christians. Even the Lone Ranger wasn’t a Lone Ranger. Tonto helped make him what he was.” The way it works in the Body of Christ is that on one day, I may be Tonto to your Lone Ranger, and on another, you may be Tonto to my Lone Ranger. Regardless, we can’t live this life without each other — and what a life it is! Praise be!  

Be blessed this day,  

Reggie Kidd+ 

The Covenant is About Presence - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Thursday • 1/25/2024 •
Thursday of 3 Epiphany, Year Two 

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 50; Genesis 16:15–17:14; Hebrews 10:1–10; John 5:30–47 

This morning’s Canticles are: following the OT reading, Canticle 8 (“The Song of Moses,” Exodus 15, BCP, p. 85); following the Epistle reading, Canticle 19 (“The Song of the Redeemed,” Revelation 15:3–4, BCP, p. 94) 

Welcome to Daily Office Devotions, where every Monday through Friday we consider some aspect of that day’s Scripture readings, as given in the Book of Common Prayer. I’m Reggie Kidd, and I’m grateful to be with you this Thursday in the Season After Epiphany. Our readings come from the Daily Office Lectionary.  

Genesis 17: gift and obligation 

Chapters 15 and 17 of Genesis depict two different phases of God’s covenant-making. “The earlier chapter,” as commentator Derek Kidner explains, “fixed the basic pattern of grace and answering faith; nothing was asked of Abram but to believe and ‘know of a surety.’”* In Genesis 15, God promises and Abram believes; moreover, by the theophany of a flaming furnace, God says, in effect, “I’m all in!”**  

If Genesis 15 teaches that righteousness is imputed to Abraham by faith (Genesis 15:6), Genesis 17 teaches that faith utterly devotes itself to the God who grants new identity and who fellowships with us. For in Genesis 17, the covenant transaction takes on new layers: while God expands his promises, he calls on Abram to declare his own dedication to the covenant through the cutting of his foreskin. Abram declares and symbolizes his own being “all in.” It’s worth recalling Paul’s teaching that the Gentile believers of Colossae have been “circumcised with a spiritual circumcision, … when you were buried with [Christ] in baptism” (Colossians 2:11b–12a). If Abram’s circumcision marked his “all in,” our baptism marks ours.  

While Genesis 17 finds God repeating and expanding his promises of land and progeny (Genesis 17:6–8), this chapter also introduces two new factors into the relationship from God’s point of view. He confers a new identity on Abram and he draws near for fellowship with his people.  

New name. God changes Abram’s name to Abraham, that is, from “Great Father” to “Father of a Multitude” (Genesis 17:4–5). A few verses later, God changes Sarai’s name to Sarah, that is, from one name that means “Princess” to another that means essentially the same thing (Genesis 17:15–16). These are the first of many name changes in the Bible—for instance, from “Not Loved” to “Loved,” and from “Not My People” to “My People” (Hosea 2:23; Romans 9:25). It’s not insignificant that Genesis 17 introduces a change in identity at the same time it introduces the Old Testament version of baptism.  

God renames strangers as friends, sinners as saints, rebels as disciples, and aliens as citizens. Quite in tune with the heart of God and the meaning of baptism, Jerusalem’s 4th century bishop named Cyril said that at our baptism we all receive the name Christopher, which means “Christ Bearer.” Amen! 

Intimate presence. “…for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you…” — Genesis 17:7. In the words “to be God to you” lies the essence of the covenant. There’s land, to be sure, and there’s progeny and the establishment of an inheritance. But at its heart, the covenant is about presence. Kidner states it nicely, “Spiritually, the essence of the covenant is personal, like the ‘I will’ of a marriage: so the pledge I will be their God (8b; cf. 7b) far outweighs the particular benefits. This is the covenant” (Kidner, p. 129).  

Utter consecration. What Yahweh calls for at this stage in his unfolding of his covenant with us is our commitment to him personally. He is not yet detailing a prescribed, encoded way of life; that dimension of the relationship awaits Moses. The point is, there’s a Person before there’s a Path.  

Consecration to God on my part (as in Genesis 17) is based on God’s prior consecration to me (as in Genesis 15)! Grace takes the lead, and grace stays in the lead. Even after the Law is introduced with the detailing of precepts and statutes and food regulations and ritual protocols, the covenant relationship remains fundamentally personal. When Moses in Deuteronomy and the Prophets after him develop their theology of circumcision, they make it a matter of the heart: “Circumcise, then, the foreskin of your heart, and do not be stubborn any longer” (Deuteronomy 10:16; see also Jeremiah 4:4).  

I pray we daily find ourselves awed by the grace of the gift of new identity in Christ, and of the intimacy of our Heavenly Father’s love. May every day bring a heart-renewal of our baptismal consecration: to know and love the One who has first known and loved us. Amen! 

Be blessed this day,  

Reggie Kidd+ 

* Derek Kidner, Genesis: An Introduction and Commentary, Tyndale Old Testament Commentaries (Downers Grove, IL: Inter-Varsity Press, 1967), p. 128.  

** See the analysis of Meredith Kline in his By Oath Consigned.  

The Mediator of a New Covenant - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Wednesday • 1/24/2024 •
Wednesday of 3 Epiphany, Year Two 

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 119:49–72; Genesis 16:1–14; Hebrews 9:15–28; John 5:19–29 

This morning’s Canticles are: following the OT reading, Canticle 11 (“The Third Song of Isaiah,” Isaiah 60:1-3,11a,14c,18-19, BCP, p. 87); following the Epistle reading, Canticle 16 (“The Song of Zechariah,” Luke 1:68-79, BCP, p. 92) 

Welcome to Daily Office Devotions, where every Monday through Friday we ask how God might direct our lives from that day’s Scripture readings, as given in the Book of Common Prayer. I’m Reggie Kidd, and I’m grateful to be with you this Wednesday in the Third Week After Epiphany. Our readings come from Year 2 in the Daily Office Lectionary.  

Genesis 16: getting ahead of God. When do you wait, and when do you act? When do you let events unfold, and when do you take things into your own hands? It’s not always easy to tell. By the time we get to Genesis 16, Abram and Sarai are in their mid-80s and mid-70s respectively, and it’s been ten long years since God promised them a child. They can be forgiven for wondering if they are supposed to continue letting nature take its course, or whether they need to help God’s promise along.  

Sarai recommends they follow a path that enjoys legal sanction in surrounding cultures: see if Abram can father a child through her handmaid. A child born from a handmaid “at the knees” (see Genesis 30:3) of the wife could be counted the legal child and heir of an otherwise childless couple. Hagar’s becomes the original “handmaid’s tale,” and it is a tale filled with its own measure of pain and strife and abuse.  

The story shines a light on aspects of human sin that, in the long arc of the story, the God of the Bible has set about to address. Abram’s faith proves to be weak in going along with the plan in the first place, the fruit of which will be self-help religion (see Paul’s commentary in Galatians 4:21–31, where he calls Hagar’s child a “child of the flesh”). Then Abram slothfully backs out of the picture when conflict emerges between Sarai and Hagar. After giving birth to Ishmael, Hagar pridefully and scornfully declares her superiority to childless Sarai. Sarai shifts all the blame for the relational breakdown onto her husband. Envious of Hagar, Sarai banishes her and the once sought-after child into the wilderness and to their likely deaths.  

The story, yet more fundamentally, shines a light on the truth of Psalm 103:13–14: “As a father pities his children, so the LORD pities those who fear him. For he knows our frame; he remembers that we are dust” (RSV). He redeems human error and protects the wronged (Reformation Study Bible notes).  

Image: Robert Dunkarton , CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons 

Gerhard Von Rad notes the shifting identity of God’s intervening presence. Here the text says it is the messenger/angel of Yahweh who speaks (Genesis 16:7,9,10,11). There the text says it is Yahweh himself who is speaking (Genesis 16:13). Von Rad suggests: “[The one who speaks] is God himself in human form. … The angel of the Lord has conspicuous Christological qualities. … He is a type, a ‘shadow’ of Jesus Christ.”* God’s mediator “heeds the affliction” of the outcast Hagar, “sees” her plight (Genesis 16:13), and promises her a great progeny through Ishmael, even if that line is to be marked by an independence and pride of spirit like her own (“his hand will be against everyone, and everyone’s hand will be against him” — Genesis 16:12 NASB).   

Hebrews: mediation by death. The mediation that is foreshadowed in Genesis comes to full expression, says the writer to the Hebrews, in Jesus Christ: “For this reason he is the mediator of a new covenant, so that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance, because a death has occurred that redeems them from the transgressions under the first covenant” (Hebrews 9:15). And it is unavoidably true from the Bible’s point of view that this mediation comes only through death. Transgressions that separate us from God: our self-made religion, our vacillating faith, our manipulation of circumstances—they can only be covered by death. And transgressions that separate us from one another: our pride and envy, our abuse, our “hand against everyone and everyone’s hand against” us—they too require the shedding of blood. 

For the longest time, the Old Covenant provided sketches of the shedding of reconciling blood of “goats and bulls and the ashes of a young cow” (Hebrews 9:13). At long last, though, God’s own Son of the line of promise to Abram (for Genesis 16 is but an interlude in the story of God’s promise to bless the nations through Abram and his progeny), “has appeared once for all at the end of the age to remove sin by the sacrifice of himself” (Hebrews 9:26b). One and done! Praise be!!  

John: the hour of resurrection is coming. Not only does transgression require death, it calls for resurrection and for a final settling of all accounts. Jesus is the one who reconciles sinners by his shed blood, and he is also the one who raises dead people by his life. The utter tragedy of Jesus’s contemporaries is that they fail to see the life-giving promise of his signs, like the raising up of the lame man. They fail to see the healing and restorative promise of Sabbath itself; they fail to recognize the Lord of the Sabbath; and they fail to see their own hope for “the resurrection of life” (John 5:29).  

We can’t raise ourselves from pallets of lameness or sloth. We can hardly resist the urge to manipulate circumstances to what seem to be good ends to us. We can’t kill the beasts of pride and envy within ourselves.  We can’t seem to control hands “against everyone” and “hands against us.” We can’t solve the problem of millennia-long grudges between people from different tribes. That’s why God’s Mediator came. He came to interpose his blood to pay for our sins. He came to usher in the power of everlasting life.  

Be blessed this day,  

Reggie Kidd+ 

* Gerhard Von Rad, Genesis: A Commentary, rev., The Old Testament Library (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1972), pp. 193,194.  

A Making Right of All Things - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Tuesday • 1/23/2024 •
Tuesday of 3 Epiphany, Year Two  

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 45; Genesis 15:1–11,17–21; Hebrews 9:1–14; John 5:1–18 

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 Third Week After Epiphany. Our readings come from Year 2 in the Daily Office Lectionary.  

Let’s start with Hebrews 9. The writer to the Hebrews shines a light on the temporary nature of all the sacrifices that preceded Jesus’s: “For if the blood of goats and bulls, with the sprinkling of the ashes of a heifer, sanctifies those who have been defiled so that their flesh is purified, … (Hebrews 9:13). With these sacrifices, incomplete and imperfect as they are, the Old Covenant shows its leaning towards “a making right of all things” (Hebrews 9:10’s kairou diorthōsis).  

With Christ, that time has come! At bottom, that which most fundamentally had to be “made right” was our consciences, our capacity to reflect on who we are, literally, our “co-knower” (Latin: con-scientia; Greek: sun+oida). No matter how hard we tried to mute them, our consciences constantly shouted out to us that we are guilty and shameful.  

Image: From "Flaming Torch 4" by invisible_al is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 

Now, let’s go to Genesis 15. Between them, the 15th and 17th and 22nd chapters of Genesis present a powerful triptych of the future “making right of all things” that constitute the Bible’s story.* In Genesis 15, God shows his utter commitment to restore us to new life; in Genesis 17, Abram answers in kind by dedicating his life to God. In Genesis 22, God provides a solution to the problem of Abram’s (and our!) inability to live up to his (and our!) end of the covenantal relationship.  

 In the logic of Ancient Near East ceremonies of “cutting a covenant,” God himself, under the figure of a flaming torch (a theophany), walks the path between pieces of slaughtered animals in Genesis 15:9–11. In the symbolic language of the ceremony, God is saying, “By my own life, I pledged thee my troth. May what has happened to these animals happen to me if I fail to keep my promise to you, Abram.”  

In Genesis 17, God calls forth from us a response of utter commitment in return; there, by the cutting of his foreskin, Abram will likewise proclaim: “By my own life, I pledge Thee my troth. May I myself be cut off from the land of the living if I fail to keep covenant with you, Yahweh.” (We will treat that in Thursday’s Devotional)  

In Genesis 22, God offers a vision of his own solution to the problem of the perfection of his promises, and the imperfection of our response, by staying an execution and providing a substitute in death. (We will treat that in next Wednesday’s Devotional.) 

In so many ways, the book of Genesis conveys God’s promises—the promise to Eve of a son to crush the serpent’s head, the promise of an olive leaf and a rainbow. Now, in Genesis 15, a flaming torch (God’s own presence) passes between pieces of slaughtered animals (pointing to the Cross). In the symbolic language of Ancient Near Eastern covenant ceremonies, God is saying he is ready to give up his own life to make his promise to Abram of a vast family come true. Amazing grace, how sweet the sound! 

… And back to Hebrews 9. The Old Covenant’s constant offerings of animals and of sprinkling worshipers with the shed blood of those animals—all of it was a promissory picture. The entirety of the sacrificial system pointed forward to a singular offering and sprinkling that would make people not merely externally and ritually clean, but internally and definitively pure, altogether free from fear of judgment and disgrace. Convinced that despite everything we know about ourselves, and despite everything we know God knows about us, God’s love in Christ has reached down and made us clean: “…how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to worship the living God!” (Hebrews 9:14).  

Be blessed this day, 

Reggie Kidd+ 

* Following the analysis of Meredith Kline in his By Oath Consigned.  

A High Priest in the Sanctuary - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Monday • 1/22/2024 •
Monday of 3 Epiphany, Year Two  

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 41; Psalm 52; Genesis 14:1–24; Hebrews 8:1–13; John 4:43–54 

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 Third Week After Epiphany, in Year Two of the Daily Office Readings.  

“Now the main point in what we are saying is this: we have such a high priest, one who is seated at the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in the heavens, a minister (the Greek is leitourgos, or quite literally, a liturgist, a worship leader) in the sanctuary and the true tent that the Lord, and not any mortal, has set up” (Hebrews 8:1–2).  

“Now the main point in what we are saying is this:….” Nowhere else is the Bible quite as clear as this, is it? I believe there’s one thought to ponder from today’s readings: “We have such a priest”: “we have … a high priest, … a minister/liturgist/worship leader in the sanctuary.”  

What does that mean? Negatively, it means we do not have to figure our life out on our own. We do not have to “climb a stairway to heaven” for access to God. We do not have to attain competency to negotiate our own soul’s standing with God.

Positively it means (ranging over today’s passages in no particular order): 

“…It is necessary for this priest also to have something to offer” — Hebrews 8:3. A pressing reality for us humans—every one of us — is that there is guilt for things done that shouldn’t have been done, and for things not done that should have been done. There is also a shame over a nagging sense of unworthiness or defilement or unlovability. This guilt and this shame our high priest Jesus Christ took into himself on the Cross. There absorbed them and disposed of them, winning for us absolution and release. By Jesus’s priesthood, we 1) are freed in conscience, 2) made worthy to stand before God, 3) cleansed from sin, and 4) counted altogether lovable — Hebrews 8:12.  

“…not like the covenant that I made with their ancestors … This is the covenant that I will make … I will put my laws in their minds, and write them on their hearts” — Hebrews 8:9a,10a). There is a waywardness of the human heart that can only be fixed by Jesus doing an internal work: by his indwelling presence, our liturgist from on high plants his laws in our minds and inscribes them on our hearts — Hebrews 8:10.  

“And King Melchizedek of Salem brought out bread and wine; he was priest of God Most High”— Genesis 14:18. Reading Genesis 14 typologically (that is, as an anticipation of Christ, as does the writer to the Hebrews), our Melchizedekian priest brings us “bread and wine” from God’s holy altar (Genesis 14:18; Hebrews 13:10), blesses us in the name of God (Genesis 14:19–20; Hebrews 2:12), and receives the offering of our lips and our lives (Genesis 14:20c; Hebrews 13:15–16).  

“Jesus said to him, ‘Go; your son will live.’ The man believed the word that Jesus spoke to him and started on his way. 51 As he was going down, his slaves met him and told him that his child was alive. 52 So he asked them the hour when he began to recover, and they said to him, ‘Yesterday at one in the afternoon the fever left him.’ 53 The father realized that this was the hour when Jesus had said to him, ‘Your son will live.’ So he himself believed, along with his whole household” — John 4:50–53. The healer of people’s souls is not restricted by his lack of physical presence. 

I pray that you and I rest in who Jesus is, in what he has done, and in what he continues to do in our lives. May we know he has come down to raise us up from death to life, from guilt to pardon, and from shame to God’s embrace. May we know freedom from wayward wandering, and, instead, the joy of responding to the inscribing of Jesus’s character into our minds and hearts. May we know the ongoing blessing of his heavenly ministry to us — at the Table, in the Word, and in our worship with our lips and our lives.  

Be blessed this day,  

Reggie Kidd+ 

Living with Wonder and Delighted Optimism - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Friday • 1/19/2024 •
Friday of 2 Epiphany, Year Two  

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 37; Genesis 11:27–12:8; Hebrews 7:1–17; John 4:16–26 

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 Second Week of the Season After Epiphany. We are in Year 2 of the Daily Office Lectionary.  

Weeks before the end of her nearly 100 years of life, TV’s Golden Girls (and the Super Bowl’s Snickers Bar commercial) actress Betty White told people.com that her famously upbeat nature came from being born “a cockeyed optimist.”  

Genesis 12: “cockeyed optimism.” The Bible as a whole is characterized by “cockeyed optimism,” and that is true of the book of Genesis in a special way.  

Biblical scholar Gerhard Von Rad says it well:  

The story about the Tower of Babel concludes with God’s judgment on mankind; there is no word of grace. The whole primeval history, therefore, seems to break off in shrill dissonance…: Is God’s relationship to the nations now finally broken; is God’s gracious forbearance now exhausted; has God rejected the nations in wrath forever? That is the burdensome question which no thoughtful reader of ch. 11 can avoid…. Only then is the reader properly prepared to take up the strangely new thing that now follows the comfortless story about the building of the tower: the election and blessing of Abraham. We stand here, therefore, at the point where primeval history and sacred history dovetail, and thus at one of the most important places in the entire Old Testament. * 

It is “cockeyed optimism” that dares to hold out hope that despite the bleakness of the situation we are left with at the end of the story of the Tower of Babel, nonetheless “all the families of the earth shall be blessed” (Genesis 12:3b). What makes the hope seem especially “cockeyed” is that this universal hope comes through one particular man and his posterity: “Now the Lord said to Abram, ‘Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you’” (Genesis 12:1). As only the Bible could image things, the reversal of the universal revolt against God’s rule begins with one man, without a word, doing what God says to do: “So Abram went, as the Lord had told him…” (Genesis 12:4).  

Image: Zairon, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons 

Hebrews 7: Melchizedek’s “Easter egg.” Furthering the “cockeyed optimism” of the Bible, the writer to the Hebrews delivers one of the most delightful “Easter eggs” in the entire Bible. He recalls a moment in Abraham’s life when the patriarch points dramatically to the coming of Christ. Abraham has himself just played the role of deliverer, rescuing his nephew Lot in a great military victory over “the five kings.” Returning home from his victory, Abraham meets a mysterious priest and king named Melchizedek, who, according to the writer to the Hebrews, prefigures Christ. His name means “King of Righteousness” and he is king of a city named Salem, which means “Peace” (the future Jerusalem, “City of Peace”). So he is “King of Righteousness” and “King of Peace.” But he is also a priest of the “Most High God” (Hebrews 7:1).  

Because no father or mother or genealogy or birth date or death date is recorded of him, Melchizedek prefigures Christ’s eternality (Hebrews 7:3). Because he receives a tithe from Abraham, he represents a priesthood that is superior to the Levitical priesthood that will descend from Abraham (Hebrews 7:4–9). And because he is a Gentile, he stands as a testimony that the children of Abraham’s mission are also recipients of God’s kind intentions for the whole world. Jesus’s own priesthood is emphatically patterned after Melchizedek’s—or in the “cockeyed” logic of typology (Old Testament shadow-prefigurements of New Testament realities), perhaps it’s better to say that Melchizedek’s is patterned after Christ’s! 

John 4: God’s “cockeyed” grace. The true and living God whom the non-Jew Melchizedek serves as the “Most High God” will reveal himself to Moses as the great “I AM” in the burning bush of Exodus 3. In John 4, the great “I AM” makes the most explicit of his self-revelations: “The woman said to him, ‘I know that Messiah is coming’ (who is called Christ). ‘When he comes, he will proclaim all things to us.’ Jesus said to her, ‘I AM, the one who is speaking to you’” (John 4:25–26). Jesus makes this astounding revelation to this “fallen” woman of the Samaritan well, she whose illicit liaisons force her to come for water in the middle of the day. Here is God’s “cockeyed” grace—“grace upon grace” (John 1:16).  

Moreover, Jesus, as the great “I AM,” has come not just to bring reconciliation to the likes of this lost woman, he has come to heal the breaches in the fractured human race. Jews and Samaritans looked at one another across a No Man’s Land of religious loathing and disdain. But Jesus has come to heal tribal antipathies and reconcile brothers lost to each other in religious warfare: “But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such as these to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth” (John 4:23–24).  

The words are not empty, nor are they naïve optimism. The Father’s “seeking” leads Jesus, as Athanasius puts it, to “stretch out his hands, that with the one he might draw the ancient people and with the other those from the Gentiles, and join both together in himself” (On the Incarnation 25). The results are as sure as Jesus’s resurrection from the dead, and they begin to take effect when apostles from Jerusalem return to Samaria to witness the Spirit of Pentecost baptizing people there just as it had in Jerusalem (Acts 8:14–17).  

May you and I live with cockeyed wonder and delighted optimism at the saving power of God in Christ.  

Be blessed this day,  

Reggie Kidd+ 

* Gerhard Von Rad, Genesis: A Commentary, rev., The Old Testament Library (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1972), p. 153.