Real Opportunity for Christ's Light - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Thursday • 9/5/2024 •

Thursday of Proper 17

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 37:1-18; Job 16:16-22; 17:1,13-16 (per BCP) or Job 16,17; Acts 13:1-12; John 9:1-17

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)

Psalm 37. Today’s Psalm offers comfort and consolation for God’s people when they feel, like Job, overwhelmed. The promises of Scripture, expressed in Psalm 37, are set against life’s frustrations and injustices in order to remind us that God is ultimately in charge. His love and his justice will not be thwarted. (This Psalm is worth reading in its entirety this morning.)

Image: Attributed to Gerard Seghers , Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Job. In the early verses of Job 16 (not included in today’s reading), Job describes feeling brutalized by God: God has torn his body, handed him over to wicked people, broken his neck, set him up as an archery target, and savagely sliced his body open: “He slashes open my kidneys, and shows no mercy; he pours out my gall on the ground” (Job 16:13).

Feeling unjustly attacked, Job asks, in verse 18, that the earth not cover his blood, so that it can cry out as an appeal for vindication. At the same moment, Job suddenly seems to realize that his hope resides in his relationship with God. Through the despair and anguish that have accompanied Job thus to this point, Job catches a glimpse of consolation. As if catching sight of the sure and steady comfort of a lighthouse beacon piercing a raging night at sea, Job perceives that his advocate in heaven is God himself: “Even now, in fact, my witness is in heaven, and he that vouches for me is on high” (Job 16:19). As we saw just yesterday in Job 14, and as we will see tomorrow in Job 19, “embedded in [Job’s] lamentations,” says commentator F. I. Anderson, is “a titanic assertion of faith.”  Although he accuses heaven, Job looks there for his only defense, though he cannot see ahead.  When life is difficult, we might do as well:

Commit your way to the Lord;    trust in him, and he will act.He will make your vindication shine like the light,    and the justice of your cause like the noonday. — Psalm 37:5-6

Hardened as it is in the furnace of tribulation, Job’s stubborn faith in a heavenly advocate prepares, in its own unique way, for the future revelation of Jesus Christ. Job sees, dimly, something that we, from our vantage point, recognize was already there, on a far horizon. Small wonder that a Christian “great” like Augustine of Hippo would describe the relationship between the Old Testament and the New Testament this way: “The new is in the old concealed; the old is in the new revealed.”

 John 8. When Jesus does come, the issue of vision, of the ability to see, is more immediate. Jesus comes with the authority and the power to open eyes that cannot see, and to close eyes that only think they see. As he declares (in tomorrow’s reading), “I came into this world for judgment so that those who do not see may see, and those who do see may become blind” (John 9:39). 

Sight for a man born blind. Earlier, in the middle of John 8, Jesus had proclaimed himself to be the “Light of the World.” In John 9, he repeats this claim, and provides a “sign” of that reality: he heals a man who had been born blind. (Notice that is a second healing on the Sabbath by Jesus. Coincidence? I think not! “I AM” is, after all, Lord of the Sabbath. The repetitions provide symbolic emphasis.) Jesus specifies that the man’s blindness is not the result of his sin or of his parents (reinforcing Job’s message that it isn’t necessarily our fault when we suffer!). As with Job, what’s on display here is the glory and power of God. 

John discloses that Jesus came to offer sight to the blind. Not just physical sight to a single individual, but spiritual sight to those who will respond to his invitation. Conversely, as we see in the Acts reading for today, if you refuse to see, Jesus will confirm your blindness. 

Blindness for a blind guide. Providentially, today’s Daily Office readings beautifully illustrate this last point, that is, in the apostle Paul’s encounter with the magician/Jewish false prophet named Elymas, or Bar-Jesus (which, ironically, means “Son of Jesus”), on the island of Cyprus. Cyprus is the first stop on the First Missionary Journey, as recorded in Acts. The island’s Roman governor, Sergius Paulus, summons the missionaries because he wishes to hear their message. However, when they arrive for their audience, “Barnabas and Saul” find Bar-Jesus urging the proconsul to reject their teaching about faith in Jesus Christ. 

Sidebar: An interesting pivot in the ministry takes place as “Saul” steps forward under his Roman name “Paul” (a name that he happens to share with the governor, whose name is Sergius Paulus). From now on, we will know the apostle only by his Roman name. Further, the leadership of the missionary group will no longer be described as “Barnabas and Saul,” but as “Paul and Barnabas.” 

At any rate, in the presence of Sergius Paulus, the apostle Paul rebukes the false prophet, “You son of the devil … you will be blind for a while, unable to see the sun” (Acts 13:11). Immediately, Bar-Jesus goes blind. Seeing this, Sergius Paulus attains spiritual sight: “When the proconsul saw what had happened, he believed, for he was astonished at the teaching about the Lord” (Acts 13:12). 

I pray that you and I have the grace to acknowledge whatever darkness we experience as what it is: real darkness—and at the same time, real opportunity for Christ’s light. 

Collect for the 2nd Sunday after the Epiphany. Almighty God, whose Son our Savior Jesus Christ is the light of the world: Grant that your people, illumined by your Word and Sacraments, may shine with the radiance of Christ’s glory, that he may be known, worshiped, and obeyed to the ends of the earth; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who with you and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns, one God, now and for ever. Amen. 

Be blessed this day, 

Reggie Kidd+

The Secret of the Bible - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Wednesday • 9/4/2024 •

Wednesday of Proper 17

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 38; Job 12:1; 14:1-22; Acts 12:18-25; John 8:47-59 

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)

Job’s death wish. Job careens between longing for death as relief from his pain and longing for an “awakening”, a “rousing from sleep”, a “release” after death. In the midst of uttering some of his most hopeless of words, Job cannot give in to hopelessness itself. He ponders the “hope for a tree” that is cut down, that seems dead, but that may yet “bud and put forth branches like a young plant.” Then he ponders death as possibly not final, but rather as a kind of waiting for God’s wrath to pass, for transgressions to be sealed up in a bag, and iniquity to be covered, until … until what? Until “you would appoint me a set time, and remember me” (Job 14:13). Job dares to imagine that the God who made him for relationship with himself “would long for the work of your hands.” And remember …. 

Even as he seems to push God away (“Look away from them and desist”), Job draws nearer. Reduced to pestilential sores and unimaginable loss, ultimately Job cannot imagine that God would not bring life out of all that is happening to him. 

Image: Adaptation, Classical Numismatic Group, Inc. http://www.cngcoins.com, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Herod—now, he’s a different story. This is Herod Agrippa (11 bc – ad 44), grandson to Herod the Great (of Bethlehem fame, at Jesus’ birth).  A product of privilege, Agrippa had been raised in Rome, where he became a close friend to the emperor Caligula. He was close enough that an admonition from him once prevented Caligula from profaning the Jewish temple. After Caligula’s assassination, Agrippa had some role in Claudius’s becoming emperor. Claudius, in turn, granted Agrippa dominion over Judea and Samaria. Agrippa reestablished, somewhat, the domain of his grandfather Herod the Great, and his own building projects rivaled those of his grandfather. According to the Mishnah, he supported the Jewish faith, even reading Scripture to the people one year at the Feast of Tabernacles. 

In Acts 12, when Agrippa entertains the leaders of Tyre of Sidon in Caesarea, he is 56 years old and at the top of his game. The Jewish historian Josephus also describes this occasion, and does so in a way that is remarkably similar to today’s passage in Acts: 

On the second day of the spectacles [Herod Agrippa] put on a garment made wholly of silver, of a truly wonderful texture, and came into the theater early in the morning. There the silver of his garment, being illuminated by the fresh reflection of the sun’s rays, shone out in a wonderful manner, and was so resplendent as to spread awe over those that looked intently upon him. Presently his flatterers cried out, one from one place, and another from another, (though not for his good) that he was a god; and they added, “Be thou merciful to us; for although we have hitherto reverenced thee only as a man, yet shall we henceforth own thee as superior to mortal nature.” Upon this the king neither rebuked them nor rejected their impious flattery. Josephus Antiquities 19.8.2 344-345

Agrippa should have known better than to allow people to acclaim him, in Luke’s words: “The voice of a god, and not of a mortal!” (Acts 12:22). It’s ironic that it is the leaders of Tyre who are there to implore Agrippa’s help that day. Centuries before, the prophet Ezekiel had warned the King of Tyre that their king is “a mere mortal and not a god,” and that he “will die a violent death” (Ezekiel 28:2,8). Though Josephus and the Book of Acts differ slightly in their details, they both describe Agrippa being struck down by intestinal disease that day, dying an ignominious and painful death. Acts says, “And immediately, because he had not given the glory to God, an angel of the Lord struck him down, and he was eaten by worms and died” (Acts 12:23). Writing in Acts, Luke’s perspective is that Agrippa’s self-idolatrous pretensions result in his becoming worm food.

Life in Jesus, the great I AM. “Whoever keeps my word will never die. … Very truly, I tell you, before Abraham was, I AM” — The secret of the Bible is that a Job can go desperately low, yet without losing hope, and that an Agrippa’s seemingly divine splendor will be shown to be the sham that it really is. That secret is that the One who is Life itself has walked among us, and lives among us still. The staggering claim that he makes for himself in John 8, is that he existed before Abraham some 2000 years prior. The claim, in fact, is one of eternal pre-existence, an astonishing claim: Jesus states that he IS God, the I AM of the Old Testament, the I AM of the Exodus, the I AM who spoke to Moses. Jesus’ hearers know this is exactly what he is claiming. They are ready to stone him because claiming to be God is blasphemy. (Unless, as in this case, it happens to be TRUE!) Jesus = God is a mystery that we will never “solve,” but that we must take into account, and that we can even marvel in. Because Jesus came from eternity, he is able to carry us to eternity. He makes “eternal life” reside in his people, even now: “Very truly, I tell you, anyone who hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life, and does not come under judgment, but has passed from death to life” (John 5:24). I pray you know that life—his very presence—in you, now and forever. 

Be blessed this day,

Reggie Kidd+

You Will Be Free Indeed - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Tuesday • 9/3/2024 •

Tuesday of Proper 17

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 26; Psalm 28; Job 12:1, 13:3-17,21-27 (per BCP) or Job 12:1; 13:1-27; Acts 12:1-17; John 8:33-47

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)

Today’s readings offer life-giving “takes” on freedom.

Job’s freedom to be honest with his friends. If you would only keep silent, that would be your wisdom! … Will you speak falsely for God, and speak deceitfully for him? … Your maxims are proverbs of ashes, your defenses are defenses of clay. — Job 13:5,7,12. 

Job’s freedom to be honest about his approach to God. See, he will kill me; I have no hope; but I will defend my ways to his face. This will be my salvation, that the godless shall not come before him. — Job 13:15-16. 

Job feels free enough to speak honestly to God even if it is in an angry and frustrated fashion. He is free from the need to “speak falsely for God.” One simple lesson from today’s Old Testament reading: it’s better to say, “I don’t get it,” than to pretend that you do.    

Image: Alonso Cano , Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Jesus’s promise of freedom. So if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed. — John 8:36. 

Jesus’s deniers are certainly not free, despite their protests to the contrary. They are children of their father the devil, and can only do his bidding. The devil is a “murderer” and a “liar and the father of lies” (John 8:44), and so they can only believe a lie and wreak destruction on the people around them. 

The opponents in Jesus’s dialogue are defining themselves by their lineage: “We are descendants of Abraham,” they say, “and have never been slaves to anyone” (John 8:33). (Let’s ignore for the moment Israel’s actual history, as well as the fact that they are living under occupation by the Roman army where their freedoms are restricted.) For Jesus’s opponents, their ancestry is their identity. And thus they are trapped. They can’t see that there is a higher calling, something greater than ethnic identity and loyalty. Failing to recognize that Jesus comes from the Heavenly Father, they show themselves to belong to the family of the one that Jesus calls “your father the devil” (John 8:44). 

Implication: To the extent that I identify myself in terms of my background or heritage, my “fill-in-the-blankness,” I cannot see that the source of genuine freedom is knowing, loving, and being loved by Jesus Christ. Not only that, but defining life through loyalty to “my group” forces me to define other people only in terms of how like, or unlike, “my group” is to “their group.”  In one of his most direct declarations thus far in John’s gospel, Jesus pronounces these people to be children of “your father the devil.” They are living in hell on earth. Lord Jesus, give me the freedom of the truth that in you, and in you only, lies all freedom, personal meaning, and power to inspire life in others. 

Peter is freed from jail by an angelic visitation. Such power! With a touch of humor, Luke notes that when Peter knocks at the door, Rhoda the servant girl is so excited that she leaves him in the street while she runs back inside to tell everybody the good news. And, curiously, after this reunion, Peter “left and went to another place” (Acts 8:17). Indeed, he had plenty of work to do elsewhere, eventually rounding out his ministry, it appears, in Rome (1 Peter 5:13). 

God, give us grace to believe that you have the power to remove whatever binds us: from determining who we are by where we come from, from feeling we can’t be honest with you about our hurts, or from any chains (physical or spiritual) that would hold us back from the ministry to which you have called us. 

Be blessed this day,

Reggie Kidd+

On Life in Crisis - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Monday • 9/2/2024 •

Monday of Proper 17

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 25; Job 12:1-6,13-25 (per BCP) or Job 12:1-25; Acts 11:19-30; John 8:21-32

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)

Job on life in crisis. Crises emerge, evolve, turn lives upside, trade places with each other in the news cycle: pandemic, gun violence, racial reckoning, no-holds-barred politics, the specter of another world war. Crises unmoor us, and “force us to pause and question assumptions so deeply ingrained that we didn’t know we had them,” says author Eric Weiner. In doing so, they provide the opportunity to gain new perspectives. 

Image: Adaptation, Pixabay

Those at ease have contempt for misfortune, but it is ready for those whose feet are unstable — Job 12:5. In the midst of his personal crisis, Job sees something we all should be aware of all the time: the wise and virtuous can suffer, while the foolish and wicked can prosper. Job is a “laughingstock” to friends who look upon his sufferings and wrongly blame him for them. Sarcastically, he mocks their pretense to wisdom: “when you die, wisdom will die with you” (Job 12:3b JB). His friends’ simplistic formula (good always triumphs) doesn’t match the complexities of the moment (up is down, and down is up). 

The presence of the Book of Job in the canon of Scripture is a good thing. It reminds us not to be shocked when things don’t work the way they are supposed to. When we can’t share common air — or in church, a common cup. When we can’t attend a 4th of July parade or go to the mall without fearing for our lives. When we can’t be sure the resolve to preserve democracy won’t wither in the face of autocracy. When a democratic way of life itself seems unsure of itself. 

As Job observes: 

He makes nations great, then destroys them;
    he enlarges nations, then leads them away.
He strips understanding from the leaders of the earth,
    and makes them wander in a pathless waste (Job 12:23-24). 

The presence of the Book of Job is good in another way: it makes us appreciate the distinctiveness of a redemption that comes at the hands of a Savior who steps into all of this “upside-downness,” taking it all into himself to turn it right side up. 

Jesus steps into our crises. In John’s Gospel the spiritual leaders (the Pharisees) are so confused about Jesus’s aims that they wonder if he isn’t suicidal: “Is the going to kill himself?” Like Job, he’s become a “laughingstock” at best, an object of derisive pity at worst. The supposed leaders cannot understand that the great “I AM” is walking among them (John 8:23), nor that this revelation will take place when he is “lifted up” (John 8:28). Lifted up on his Cross, the Son of Man will bring both healing from sin’s destructive power (John 3:14) and healing from humankind’s divisiveness (John 12:32). Who will be the laughingstock then? 

When Jesus says, “the truth will make you free,” the truth to which he refers is twofold: first, his identity as the great I AM who has “become flesh and tabernacled among us” (John 1:14); and second, his mission to give his life to heal sinners and to reconcile the estranged. 

This truth makes us free when we, his disciples, “abide in my word” (John 8:31 NASB). That is to say, the freedom Jesus promises comes not by mere passing familiarity with a verse here or there: a prooftext to support a pre-commitment, or a slogan to promote a cause. The freedom comes from daily, and moment-by-moment, immersion in his words, his thoughts, and his actions as they are conveyed to us here in John and in the other books of the Bible. And from immersive prayer in community with fellow travelers who follow him. That freedom comes when, like Job, we hear the chaotic noise around us, but unlike Job, we also hear the clear strong voice of the One that says: “I AM—I AM the Light of the World … the Resurrection and the Life … the Good Shepherd … the Door for the Sheep … the Bread from Heaven … the True Vine … the Way, the Truth, and the Life … believe in me.” 

Be blessed this day, 

Reggie Kidd+

Jesus, Be Our Life - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Friday • 8/30/2024 •

Friday of Proper 16

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 16; Psalm 17; Job 9:1-15,32-35 (per BCP) or Job 9:1-35; Acts 10:34-48; John 7:37-52

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)

Life-giving water & unending light. To appreciate all that is going on in chapters 7-9 of John’s Gospel (the reading of these chapters will take us through next week), we need to understand two features of the Feast of Booths (also known as Feast of Tabernacles). In Exodus 23 and Leviticus 23, this seven-day long feast had been established to celebrate the end of the harvest season. By Jesus’s time, given the feast’s harvest theme, ceremonies in the Temple had taken on an end-times cast. The prophet Zechariah anticipated the day when God would bring unending light, and would cause “living water” to flow unendingly from the temple itself: 

On that day a fountain shall be opened for the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem, to cleanse them from sin and impurity. … On that day there shall not be either cold or frost. And there shall be continuous day (it is known to the Lord), not day and not night, for at evening time there shall be light. On that day living waters shall flow out from Jerusalem, half of them to the eastern sea and half of them to the western sea; it shall continue in summer as in winter. And the Lord will become king over all the earth; on that day the Lord will be one and his name one (Zechariah 13:1; 14:6-9, emphasis added). 

Image: "pouring water" by Kamoteus (A New Beginning) is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

And so, over the course of the week of the Feast of Tabernacles, pitchers of water from Jerusalem’s Gihon Springs would be poured onto the altar during the day, and menorahs would be lit at night—all of it in anticipation of the day when Yahweh would come in person and provide continuous light and ever-flowing, life-giving water. 

It turns out that though the “hour had not yet come” for Jesus to give himself up and to be glorified, the hour had indeed come for him to reveal himself as the source of living water (John 7:37-39) and as the Light of the World (John 8:12; 9:3). 

It is “on the last day of the festival, on the great day” that Jesus steps forward. This is the final day of the pouring of water on the altar. Imagine Jesus breaking into the scene to proclaim: “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me, and let the one who believes in me drink. As the scripture has said, ‘Out of the believer’s heart shall flow rivers of living water’” (John 7:37b-38). John provides the explanation: “Now he said this about the Spirit, which believers in him were to receive; for as yet there was no Spirit, because Jesus was not yet glorified” (John 7:39).

Further, it is against this week-long festival’s celebration of God’s promise to usher in a season of continuous day that Jesus will proclaim himself to be the Light of the World in chapter 8, and then provide an illustrative sign through the healing of the man born blind in chapter 9. 

Small wonder John’s Gospel signals early on that “in him was life, and the life was the light of humankind” (John 1:4). By his death and resurrection, Jesus will release a life-renewing fountain of cleansing and healing through the Spirit of God: “There is a fountain filled with blood, drawn from Immanuel’s veins. And sinners plunged beneath that flood lose all their guilty stains” (Wm Cowper). Moreover, by his life and teaching, as well as his death and resurrection, Jesus will bring darkness to light and expose faux light for the darkness it is:

God sent the stars to give light to the world
The star of my life is Jesus
In Him there is no darkness at all
The night and the day are both alike
The Lamb is the light of the city of God
Shine in my heart, Lord Jesus (Kathleen Thomerson). 

Jesus is Life—this is good to remember when death is everywhere, from toxic political discourse, to fear and distrust between races (which today’s reading about Peter in Cornelius’s house addresses), even to the air we breathe! Jesus, be our Life. 

Jesus is Light—this is also good to remember when darkness is everywhere, from international health crises, to social upheaval; from prevaricating pundits, to storms in the night; from political chaos at home, to the beating of war drums abroad. Jesus, be our Light. 

Be blessed this day, 

Reggie Kidd+

Resting in Jesus' Hands - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Thursday • 8/29/2024 •

Thursday of Proper 16

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 18:1-20; Job 8:1-10,20-22 (per BCP) or Job 8:1-22; Acts 10:17-33; John 7:14-36

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)

When things just aren’t working. Everything has been turned upside down for everybody. Nothing seems to be working the way it’s supposed to. A friend in ministry—call him Fred—and I were talking the other day. He’s done everything right. He’s gone to the right schools, paid his dues in his work, done his best as husband and father—but things have stalled out. Ministry’s become a dead end. Relationships are flat. He’s wondering what he’s done wrong: “Why has God ghosted me?” 

According to Bildad the Shuhite, my friend has clearly done something wrong. Otherwise, things would be great. But all he has to do to get things back on track is to “seek God … if you are pure and upright, surely then he will rouse himself for you and restore you to your right place.” Yeah, right. There are some generally true axioms in Bildad’s counsel, but they don’t fit Job’s situation—nor do they fit Fred’s. 

Image: José Antonio Cartelle, Creative Commons

Encouragement from Job. Job (and my friend Fred) are going to have to wait out a hard season and hold on to God as tenaciously as possible. Job can be an encouragement to Fred by virtue of his example of the kind of “patience” (see James 5:11) that won’t let go—but a patience that won’t let itself be “ghosted” either.  Because it won’t be quiet. Maybe along the way, Fred, like Job, will learn some deeper things about God, who will eventually make his presence known. 

Encouragement from Jesus. Knowing that he is in the hands of the Jesus of John 7 can be an encouragement to Fred, too. In today’s passage in John, the authority of Jesus is in question. By what right had he cleansed the Temple (John 2), healed on the Sabbath (John 5), and declared himself to be the people’s Passover meal (John 6)? Some of the people cannot understand the source of Jesus’s authority because he had not been taught by a particular rabbi, nor trained in a particular school of interpretation. 

When challenged about his credentials, Jesus says that his authority comes from higher up: “My teaching is not mine but his who sent me.” Jesus has been taught by his Heavenly Father. Now, my friend Fred went to the best schools—those schools refined his ability to convey the message, but they didn’t supply it. And while he needed the church to authenticate his “calling,” his call really came from higher up. Having something to say is all about listening directly to the Father’s voice—which is found in his Word and in prayer. My friend could lean more on the Father’s daily instruction, and less on others’ validation. 

Jesus’s understanding of his goal can be an encouragement to Fred as well. When people try to arrest Jesus, his response is (I paraphrase): “I know where I came from, and you should too. And I know where I’m going, and you can’t stop me.” And besides, his “hour” has not yet come.  As long as Fred rests in Jesus’s hands, he can have that same confidence. No matter how foggy the road ahead looks, the Lord Jesus knows what’s out there, and he is directing the traffic. It may mean that Fred gives up leaning on his own five-year plans, and instead learns to trust Jesus to manage, or modify, them. Or to possibly lead him in a totally different direction altogether.

Encouragement from Peter. Peter’s readiness to respond to God’s unexpected leading can also be an encouragement to Fred. Who knows when “messengers” will come knocking? Who knows how God may use our pain and stumbling to bring healing and direction to others—at the right time and in the right place? Sometimes, as in Peter’s case, there are seasons when we’re unaware that we’re just getting ourselves ready for whatever’s next. 

Be blessed this day,

Reggie Kidd+

Complaining in the Right Direction - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Wednesday • 8/28/2024 •

Wednesday of Proper 16

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 119:1-24; Job 6:1; 7:1-21; Acts 10:1-16; John 7:1-13 

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

Today, we draw lessons from confusion and consternation experienced by Job, by Jesus’s brothers, and by Peter. 

In his confusion, Job begins to pray. In chapter 7, Job lifts up a prayer of bitter complaint—sour though it is, it is nonetheless a prayer. There’s no posturing here, no hiding the desperation of his heart behind safe religious bromides. Life itself feels like slavery under a cruel master (7:1-3). God treats us violently, moans Job, like we are some sort of threat to his sovereignty, wrestling us down like we were his enemies, the Sea (divinized by the ancient Canaanites as the god Yam) and the Dragon (the sea creature Tannin associated with Yam — 7:12). Days are swift interludes between nights that are filled with scary dreams and terrifying visions (7:6,13-15). Parodying the way Psalm 8 marvels at God’s bestowing dignity upon humans despite their seeming insignificance, Job bewails God’s making so big a deal of us that he presses down upon us with an unrelenting gaze: “What is mankind that you make so much of them, that you give them so much attention, that you examine them every morning and test them every moment?” (7:17-19 NIV). 

Appreciate the consternation of Job. “If I have sinned, what have I done to you, you who see everything we do?” — Job 7:20. Job knows that he’s a sinner (in the Hebrew text, there’s no “If” at the beginning of verse 20!). Yet he knows that his transgressions have been covered by sacrifice (1:13). He knows that what is happening is out of scale to anything for which he is culpable: “Why have you made me a target? Why have I become a burden to you?” (7:20). And so he whines: “Let me alone!” (Job 7:16). He complains loud, and he complains long. But he complains in the right direction—up. 

Image: Cassidy Lancaster, Creative Commons

God often does things in a puzzling way. We can gloss things over. We can stuff our reactions. We can pretend everything’s OK when it’s not. Or, we can cry out to him and ask: “What in the world is going on?” 

Appreciate the consternation of Jesus’s brothers. John says they “don’t believe in him” (John 7:5). Actually, they do “believe in him”—after a certain fashion. They believe in him enough to know that he’s gained notoriety (he’s turned water to wine, and he’s already cleansed the temple, according to John—see John 2). If he were to show up in Jerusalem at a big festival, he would make a big splash. But they don’t “believe in him” in the sense that they don’t understand that he is the great I AM who has come in the flesh to lay down his life for them and for the world. 

They urge him to use the upcoming Feast of Booths in Jerusalem to further his cause and build his following. They don’t get it. But Jesus says he’s going to pass on the opportunity. His hour has not yet come. Instead, he lets them go ahead, where various arguments are taking place about him. He doesn’t tell them that he plans to attend anyway (as we’ll see in tomorrow’s reading), nor that he will use the occasion to reveal more about who he is and why he has come. But he leaves his brothers, for now, to be exposed to people’s ambivalence about him. 

Appreciate the consternation of Peter. Peter was raised to honor kosher laws (Acts 10:14). In Matthew he is challenged by Jesus himself to understand that “clean” and “unclean” are matters of the heart and not externals (“ it is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but it is what comes out of the mouth that defiles”—Matthew 15:11). After the resurrection, Peter has been commissioned to “make disciples of the nations” (Matthew 28). The implication of how that works out hasn’t yet dawned on him. 

The big reveal begins with today’s story about the strange vision of an angel appearing to a hungry Peter. The angel lowers a big sheet to the ground with “all kinds of four-footed creatures and reptiles and birds of the air.” To Peter’s amazement the angel commands, “Get up, Peter; kill and eat” (Acts 10:13). Peter protests that he can’t violate kosher. The angel’s reply should have changed everything for Peter instantly: “What God has made clean, you must not profane.” (An aside: Poor Peter! A number of things in Peter’s life seem to require a repetition of threes: the cock crows three times when Peter denies knowing Jesus; after the resurrection Jesus asks Peter if he loves him—3 times!) So here we are possibly not surprised to observe that the whole conversation with Peter has to be repeated three times. And even then, it’s going to take the events of our next two days’ readings (the visit to Cornelius’s house) to change Peter’s mind. 

Especially if you are living with consternation about what God is up to in your life and in the world, I pray that your first instinct, like Job’s, will be to pray honestly and boldly (if humbly) to God. I pray you will recognize that, as with Jesus’s brothers, the Lord works on his own timeline and to his own ends, not ours. And I pray that you will appreciate that as patient and persistent as the Lord was in revealing his ways to Peter, our Lord Christ can be just as patient and persistent with you. 

Be blessed this day, 

Reggie Kidd+

Confident Faith - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Tuesday • 8/27/2024 •

Tuesday of Proper 16

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 5; Psalm 6; Job 6:1-4,8-15,21 (per BCP) or Job 6:1-30; Acts 9:32-43; John 6:60-71

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)

Job: desperate faith. One of the lessons of the Book of Job is that God may use evil to change a “good” person into someone breathtakingly “better.” In Job’s case, God uses suffering to transform a believer from blamelessness, uprightness, and integrity before God (which is exceptional enough), to awestruck wonder in the very presence, and at the actual voice, of God. We shall see that Job’s perspective changes forever with his new comprehension of the overwhelming power and majesty and holiness of God. 

Image: Adaptation,  "Star Cluster Melotte 15" by cfaobam is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

In today’s passage we are early in the process, and Job is afraid that if he continues to live, his sufferings will lead him to curse God as his wife had urged. However, he would rather die than blaspheme. And so, he would prefer that God simply strike him dead:

May it please God to crush me,
to give his hand free play and do away with me!
This thought, at least, would give me comfort
(a thrill of joy in unrelenting pain),
that I had not denied the Holy One’s decrees (Job 6:9-10 Jerusalem Bible). 

The words sound rash—almost like the braying of the donkey to which Job likens himself in verse 5. But they carry a kind of faith that is hard to comprehend in a world where God’s own name gets tossed about glibly as a curse word, as though carrying no actual meaning. Job would rather lose his life than lose his faith. That’s something worth thinking about. 

Jesus: confident faith. God’s power to use evil to redemptive ends is on display in the Good News that Christ’s death on the cross and his resurrection brought life to those for whom he died. And Jesus has full confidence that any resistance to his ministry fits into his Father’s plan. “Jesus knew from the first who were the ones that did not believe, and who was the one that would betray him” (John 6:64). This realization does not lead to self-doubt or faintheartedness, on the one hand, or to rigorous denunciation of the non-believers and the betrayer, on the other. Rather, it leads to the calm affirmation of the Father’s sovereignty: “For this reason I have told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted by the Father” (John 6:65). 

Jesus Christ himself extends honest love—truly spoken and boldly lived. He leaves the results to the Father. And when Jesus urges us, “Follow me,” perhaps part of what he means is that we confidently extend the same sort of honest, true, and bold love to those around us—to friend and to foe alike. 

Wherever you are on faith’s continuum between an honest near-despair and a settled and supreme confidence, I pray that your Heavenly Father will guard and guide you as you continue this new week. 

Be blessed this day,

Reggie Kidd+

A Friend Indeed - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Monday • 8/26/2024 •

Monday of Proper 16

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 1; Psalm 2; Psalm 3; Job 4:1; 5:1-27; Acts 9:19-31; John 6:52-59

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)

Job 3 (Saturday’s reading) had described how after seven days of sitting, Job breaks the silence. He curses the day of his birth. Covered with festering sores and ashes of grief, he asks “Why is light given to one in misery and life to the bitter in soul … Why is light given to one who cannot see the way?” (Job 3:23). Job’s loss of wealth, family, and health have opened to him an even greater fear: “Truly the thing that I fear comes upon me, and what I dread befalls me” (Job 3:25). And it is that fear that will ultimately prove his salvation: he fears he has lost his relationship with God. 

Eliphaz: shallow words from a “friend.” Job 4 & 5 give us speeches of his first friend, Eliphaz. In Job 4 (Sunday’s reading), Eliphaz claims to have had a mystical experience: “A spirit glided past my face; the hair of my head bristled” (Job 4:15). That spirit, Eliphaz claims, has revealed to him that humans are fragile and imperfect, and thus subject to divine discipline. In Job 5 (today’s reading), Eliphaz reinforces his argument by appealing to tradition—to “the holy ones” (Job 5:1)—“Surely vexation kills the fool and jealousy slays the simple” (Job 5:2). In other words, religious experience and the wisdom of the ages indicate that Job has done something to bring God’s discipline. Thus, the simple answer is to confess, and trust that God will make everything OK once again. Now, it’s not that there’s no truth in Eliphaz’s words—but we know that neither he nor Job understands how complicated the situation is. And we know that eventually Job’s protestations will prove truer than Eliphaz’s truisms. 

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

Barnabas: a friend indeed. By the end of the book, Job will know God in a way that is deeper and more real. Something similar has happened to Saul in the Book of Acts, for he has come to the sudden realization that the Jesus whose memory he had been trying to expunge is alive, and is “the Son of God.” Everything is different! His demonstrating to the Jews in Damascus that Jesus is truly the Messiah leads to such an uproar that the Jews there plot to kill him. Barely escaping their attempts to kill him, he travels back down to Jerusalem and finds believers there understandably untrusting and suspicious. 

Like Job, Saul is befriended. Unlike Job, Saul is befriended well. Saul’s friend is worthy of his name: “Barnabas,” which means “Son of Encouragement.” Barnabas vouches for Saul before the apostles, and the church at large responds to Saul’s ministry. Threats against his life lead the believers to whisk him off, first to Caesarea-by-the-Sea, and then to Tarsus in Cilicia, Saul’s hometown. 

Imagine if there had been no Barnabas for Saul—imagine the church without the energy, wisdom, and authoritative teaching of the formerly persecuting rabbi who has been transformed into “apostle to the nations” (Romans 11:13). Praise God for that kind of a friend. 

“Eat my flesh. Drink my blood.” There’s an earthiness to biblical faith that is off-putting to the super-spiritual and the gnostic, but irresistible to the sons and daughters of the Creator of heaven and earth, to the truly spiritual and the non-gnostic. We have to kind of “inhabit” Job as he gets to know God at a deeper level; not in spite of, but through, his pestilential sores and the tears and ashes of his grief. There, and only there, can he—and we—experience “the fellowship of the sufferings” (Philippians 3:10). And precisely for that reason, Jesus offers himself in the earthiness of his body and blood, and in our participation in his life and death when we accept his challenging offer: “eat (Greek, trōgein = “chew”) my flesh and drink my blood” (John 6:56). He is saying: with your mouth ingest the bread and wine of the Eucharist, and with your faith take your place in my sin-destroying death and my life-conferring resurrection. Amen to that!

May the Lord Christ meet you today right where the point of pain is, right where you feel the greatest loss. May he be for you Bread from Heaven and Cup of Salvation. 

Be blessed this day,

Reggie Kidd+ 

Being There for a Friend - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Friday • 8/23/2024 •

Friday of Proper 15

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 140; Psalm 142; Job 2:1-13; Acts 9:1-9; John 6:27-40

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)

In the first two chapters of Job, we learn some important lessons:

God is in control. Through the image of a heavenly court, we are led to understand that above the tumult here on earth, there is divine governance. The one who has identified himself as Yahweh (the Lord) is God over all. However, there are other spiritual personalities in the heavens, and they include a figure who is something like a prosecuting attorney, who takes a role that is like that of the Serpent in the Garden. His title is “The Satan” — “The Accuser” — and he is an adversary of the human race. 

Satan is not in control. One of the most important perspectives that the Book of Job communicates is that this “Satan” has only limited power. He is on a leash, and the leash is firmly in the hands of Yahweh. As determined as Satan is to do harm to humans, Yahweh turns those efforts to the benefit of humans and to the accomplishment of his own purposes. This is a perspective that flows throughout Scripture, culminating in the Book of Revelation where time and again evil happens only to the extent that “authority is granted” (e.g., Revelation 6:8; 9:3; 11:6; 16;9). 

One of the most difficult—and important—lessons of the Book of Job is that God is so good that, as Bruce Waltke puts it in his Old Testament Theology, He “transcends both…what people call good and bad. Within his government both have a place, all is good in that they serve his ‘plan,’ though the human creature cannot know it or understand it” (p. 942). 

A whisper of redemption. In a scene eerily reminiscent of the Garden, Job’s wife takes Satan’s side, with her denunciation “Curse God, and die!” Unlike Adam, Job resists. With his “No!” to evil, he says “Yes!” to God. Though his “Yes!” will be sorely tested, it will prove to be a true “Yes!” It will place Job on the side of God’s restorative plans for the whole human race. The evil that was first heard in the serpent’s hiss in the Garden and has been repeated here both in the heavenly courts and in Job’s home will ultimately be silenced. 

Image: Deborah Mesibov, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

Friendship and “just being there.” Today’s passage introduces us to Job’s three friends. Throughout the rest of the book, they show themselves to be shallow, know-it-all fools. But for a week they act like true friends: they identify with Job in his pain, they share his grief, and they sit with him in silence (Job 2:12-13). If they had been better friends, they would perhaps have stayed quiet longer. Something for each of us to remember when we see a friend in pain: they need our presence rather than our platitudes. 

Hope’s reward. Clinging to hope by his fingernails, in Chapter 14 Job reaches toward a faith in final vindication: 

O that you would hide me in Sheol,
    that you would conceal me until your wrath is past,
    that you would appoint me a set time, and remember me! …

my transgression would be sealed up in a bag,
    and you would cover over my iniquity (Job 14:13,17). 

Today’s accounts of Jesus’s appearance to Saul (in Acts) and Jesus’s self-declaration to the people as “Bread of Life” (in John) are a thrilling tandem. Saul’s zeal leads him at first to the rejection of God’s “set time” and the mystery of His “covering over of iniquity” in the unexpected death of the Messiah. But on the road to Damascus, the risen and ascended Jesus reveals himself in (literally) blinding light as the answer to the kind of hope that Job had refused to let go of. And Jesus astonishes his listeners by explaining that the bread their forebears had tasted in the exodus journey was merely a foretaste of an eternally satisfying meal that he himself both is (in Himself) … and brings (in the Eucharist). 

I pray you know, and cling with confidence to, that hope, no matter what. 

Be blessed this day,

Reggie Kidd+

The Book of Job, A Timely Read - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Thursday • 8/22/2024 •

Thursday of Proper 15

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 131; Psalm 132; Psalm 133; Job 1:1-22; Acts 8:26-40; John 6:16-27

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)

Following the monastic tradition of the Western church, the Daily Office has us read Job during the months of August and September. Every era, I think, has reason to feel Job is a timely read — our day seems especially marked with loss: security, love, freedom, well-being, safety. I’m sure you can think of many ways Job fits your experience of late. A lot has been, and is being, lost. 

Image: Silvestro Chiesa , Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

A few things to pay attention to:

Job and faith. Job is our ally when our faith gets challenged by experience. Though he is “blameless and upright, one who feared God and turned from evil” (and there’s no reason to discount that language), all the props that seem to be signs of God’s blessings get stripped. Job has to face this question: Is God enough? Or has Job’s blamelessness just been too easy? We will see him flirt with disastrous ideas. We will see him rage against God. We will see him express brutal frustration with God and with His ways. But even though God will seem to shout him down at the end, actually, in the end God will commend him. God will tell Job’s friends: “You have not spoken of me what is right, as my servant Job has.” 

During our challenging era, I pray that all that comes against you gives you a more honest and direct line of communication with God. He can handle it. 

Job and friends. Indeed, we will watch Job contending with his friends and their shallow “plug-and-play” wisdom theology that says only bad people experience bad things. And we will see that while they will have done their theology only in the third person (that is, they never pray it), Job will have the honesty to take his complaints to God. The result will be that the Lord will finally tell the friends to ask Job to pray for them: “My servant Job shall pray for you, for I will accept his prayer not to deal with you according to your folly; for you have not spoken of me what is right, as my servant Job has done” (Job 42:8).  

During the greatest challenges that come our way, I pray that we are attentive to the ways that others around us struggle with a meaningful faith. They need us to do what Paul describes as “speaking the truth in love” (Ephesians 4:15). When that happens, as Paul goes on to say, “we…grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ.” 

Meanwhile, our study of Job will reveal the battle within his own soul to hold on to the initial confession he makes when hardship first hits: “‘Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return there; the Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.” The question is whether he—and by extension, you and I—will be able to hold on to that trust when things get worse and worse. 

Job & Isaiah’s Suffering Servant in Acts 8. Meanwhile, entertain the prospect that as an innocent sufferer, Job prefigures in some fashion the great Innocent Sufferer that Isaiah describes in his Suffering Servant song, and which Philip explains to the Ethiopian eunuch during the chariot ride on the road to Gaza. The Bible’s unique posture on suffering is that it is never ours to bear alone. Looking ahead, Job himself senses that he has an Advocate/Redeemer who will stand with him in his sufferings, and that death itself will not break the bond between them:

For I know that my Redeemer lives,
    and that at the last he will stand upon the earth;
26 and after my skin has been thus destroyed,
    then in my flesh I shall see God,
27 whom I shall see on my side,
    and my eyes shall behold, and not another (Job 19:25-27). 

If only Job knew how that was going to come to pass—but we do! 

Job & Jesus and Food for Eternal Life. It is a hard lesson for Job—losing wealth and family and health as he does—but there is a glorious “far side” to the recognition that, as Jesus says in today’s gospel reading, there is one “food that perishes” and another “that endures for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you.” From Genesis to Revelation, this is the great message of the Bible. And as you read Job alongside John’s telling of Jesus’s life, I pray that this food indeed nourishes you with the life which is eternal. 

Be blessed this day,

Reggie Kidd+