One Offering - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Tuesday • 2/18/2025 •

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

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

They come from a season in my life when I was on a journey from more generic free-form worship to worship shaped by the classic liturgy. I hope these observations help you in your own quest to love God and your neighbor. We’ll resume our reflections on the Daily Office next week. 

“One Offering” 

The offertory has always seemed an odd thing to me. When I was a kid, the offering followed the sermon, and for all intents and purposes concluded the service. I thought this was where you paid the pastor for the sermon. I remember thinking, “That’s a lot of pressure for a preacher.” 

In recent months, the pressure preachers seem to feel is to how to convince people to give generously during hard times.    

The question of generosity became an especially pressing one for me in 2008, when the world’s economy tanked. Like other families, mine, too, was affected.   

Nevertheless, it proved to be a ruinous blessing. It was a time to rediscover the generosity of God, and to give thanks. Our refrigerator was, after all, still full. And it was  a time to remember that ours is the God of the “refrigerator-less.”  

The liturgical church I’ve become a part of takes up an offering as part of its weekly communion, following the Book of Common Prayer: 

Representatives of the congregation bring the people’s offerings of bread and wine, and money or other gifts, to the deacon or celebrant. 

The pattern is ancient, and embodies profound truth. The offering begins the ministry of the Table, which follows the Ministry of the Word. Ushers pass plates, and then, on behalf of the whole congregation, bring forward a dual offering: the elements for the Table and the monetary donations for the church. (In other times and places, the donations might include livestock or produce or handiwork.)  

A prayer of “Great Thanksgiving” follows, celebrating God’s attributes along with his creative and redemptive acts. Then the prayer asks the Lord to bless the gifts — explicitly the bread and wine, implicitly the monetary donations.    

For whatever reasons, in many churches (like the church of my upbringing) the offertory is no longer linked to communion, and I wonder if that’s created a disconnect between our offerings and the whole story of redemption.  

The Table reminds me of God’s extravagant generosity. He was generous not just in word, but in deed. Jesus came, and he made the one Offering that counts. “Christ loved us and gave himself for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God” (Eph. 5:2). The only true worship is Jesus, Offering and Offerer. Staggering gift and overwhelming love, on lavish display especially at the Table.   

When the “stuff” of his redemption (the communion elements) is wedded to the “stuff” of my life (my gifts), my story gets folded into the Bible’s story line. As the bread and wine embody Jesus’s totally giving himself for me, so my gifts bespeak my surrender to his total claim on me. “You are not your own,” Paul reminds me, “you were bought with a price” (1 Cor. 9:19b-20a). Not only me, but all my stuff, everything that’s in my wallet — it’s all his.   

More, our offerings imitate Jesus’s Offering, and are made holy by that One Offering. The bread and wine establish no merit — the merit is all of his death and life. The money is not a payment for the sermon. It’s a means of saying, “Thank you for rescue. Thank you for freedom from the Egypt of sin. Now, who around me lives in a kind of Egypt, and how may I — on your behalf — participate in their rescue?”  

Moses had required: “… you shall love the alien, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt” (Deut. 10:19) — in effect, have an eye to the “refrigerator-less” among you. Now Jesus commands: “A new commandment I give you: that you love one another as I have loved you” (John 13:34). The generosity of the Exodus with its “mighty hand and an outstretched arm” yields to the generosity of the Incarnation with its arms stretched out on a cruel cross. I give, in part, to participate in God’s care for those still in need of redemption.  

Some truths are better perceived than conceived, to paraphrase Marshall McLuhan. One such truth is the dynamic of divine generosity, displayed most extravagantly at his Table. God’s generosity comes to us in his Son, then calls forth from us an answering generosity, expressed first in the offering of ourselves back to him in thanks, and second in the offering of ourselves and our gifts to one another and to a needy world. 

Be blessed this day, 

Reggie Kidd+ 

One Voice - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Monday • 2/17/2025 •

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

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

They come from a season in my life when I was on a journey from more generic free-form worship to worship shaped by the classic liturgy. I hope these observations help you in your own quest to love God and your neighbor. We’ll resume our reflections on the Daily Office next week. 

“One Voice” 

Sometimes it takes just one voice. 

Image: "Shandi-lee {pieces II}" by Shandi-lee is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 

“You know, some of us in the congregation are visual learners. We’d be helped if you put some art behind the lyrics you project.”  

That one voice put me on a quest to craft worship that “shows and tells.” 

“I love the contemporary songs we do in worship. But when you include the hymns I grew up with, something special happens for me. The faith I’m figuring out for myself and the faith my folks tried to instill in me stop competing with each other.”  

That one voice made me more conscious about trans-generational worship. 

There’s another kind of voice, too. I teach. At the end of every course, students have a chance to tell me (and my administration) what they think about my teaching. Nearly every semester, one student hates a course I’ve taught. That one voice makes me reflect on how to do better.  

My friend Joel Hunter is one of the most perceptive people I know. One of the wisest things he ever said was, “The way to handle criticism is to listen hard for the One Voice that’s always embedded there. Sometimes you have to completely ignore specific criticisms. Sometimes they are right on target. Always, though, Jesus has something for you.”  

Always there is One Voice.   

While introducing the concept of “mere Christianity” to his readers, C. S. Lewis acknowledged that the specific forms Christianity takes are myriad, confusing, and seemingly contradictory. Nonetheless, he maintained, at the center of the church’s life “each communion is really closest to every other in spirit, if not in doctrine.”  

And this suggests that at the centre of each there is something, or a Someone, who against all divergences of belief, all differences of temperament, all memories of mutual persecution, speaks with the same voice. 

I think I know what he means. I’ve been hearing that “same voice” recently.  

On Sunday mornings I worship at an Episcopal/Anglican cathedral, with full formal liturgy (largely chanted), incense, lectionary readings, a less-than-20-minute homily, weekly Eucharist, gorgeous old school architecture, stained glass windows and classical music.   

On Sunday evenings I worship at a trans-denominational mega-church, with infinitely variable “content-driven” worship, a 30-minute story-laced sermon, a state of the art worship center with stunning electronic visuals and polished rock-n-roll music.  

One Sunday, both services happened to pivot around the same gospel reading. In the cathedral, the passage simply came up in the normal sequence of the Christian liturgical calendar and its telling of the story of Jesus. Readings in the weeks before led up to this passage, and the OT and the epistle readings of the day illuminated it. The service created the quietly satisfying sense that we were on a journey together, and this week was an expected and encouraging stop along the way. 

Later that day in the mega-church, the identical passage seemed at first to come out of nowhere. But it was powerfully accentuated by lights and music, and in the end vividly underscored a point from the sermon. Few eyes were dry, and few people could have missed how Jesus had come to meet them.  

On reflection, I concluded that Jesus had made a point about who he is in both services. Through one church Jesus voiced the settled resolve with which he came among us. Through the other he voiced the immediacy of his presence with us. In both, as Lewis might have put it, he spoke with the same voice.  

In Christ, every voice matters. Yours. Mine. Those who have been. Those who will be. Big steeples. Little steeples. No steeples. Visual learners. Auditory learners. Kinesthetic learners. Psalm singers. Praise song singers. Hymn singers. Above them all there is One Voice who has spoken in Scripture, who has blessed many distinct voices in the history of his church, and who is now raising up new voices for ministry in a future we know to be his.  

Be blessed this day, 

Reggie Kidd+ 

The Scriptures Are the Breath of God - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Friday • 2/14/2025 •
Week of 5 Epiphany 

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 88; Isaiah 61:1–9; 2 Timothy 3:1–17; Mark 10:32–45 

This morning’s Canticles are: following the OT reading, Canticle 10 (“The Second Song of Isaiah,” Isaiah 55:6–11; BCP, p. 86); following the Epistle reading, Canticle 18 (“A Song to the Lamb,” Revelation 4:11; 5:9–10, 13, BCP, p. 93) 

Welcome to Daily Office Devotions, where every Monday through Friday we bring to our lives that day’s Scripture readings, as given in the Book of Common Prayer. I’m Reggie Kidd, and I’m grateful to be with you this Friday of the fifth week of the Epiphany of Christ.   

“You must understand this, that in the last days distressing times will come” (2 Timothy 3:1). Maybe it’s a bit counter-intuitive, but one of the things that can give Timothy courage to stand up against foolishness in the church is the realization that the persistence of evil is to be expected, even in his age. And it’s clear that for Paul, those days are upon us. They are an odd accompaniment of the victorious work of Christ.  

Isaiah had predicted “the year of the Lord’s favor” (Isaiah 61:2), and Jesus had declared he was inaugurating that new age (Luke 4:19,21). You’d think Jesus’s faithful followers would know nothing but good times. Life would be all “oil of gladness” and “mantle of praise,” all “enjoying the wealth of the nations” and “everlasting joy” (Isaiah 61:3,6,7). Paul himself says earlier in this letter that Christ has “abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel” (2 Timothy 1:10).  

And yet, Jesus warned his followers they would carry their own crosses, even in the wake of his victory. Throughout Paul’s campaign of proclaiming the good news of Christ’s saving work, he endured sufferings. When Timothy first became acquainted with Paul, Timothy saw some of those sufferings in his own hometown of Lystra (2 Timothy 3:11). And now, as he writes this letter, Paul sits in a Roman prison awaiting his probable martyrdom at the hands of Nero.  

Part of the sufferings that “the last days” would bring upon Christ’s church, Paul says, will be the assault of foolishness from within the church itself. God is surprised by none of this, by the way. And we shouldn’t be, either.  

Image: Eagle Lectern, Cathedral Church of St. Luke, Orlando, FL 

Thus, the need for faithful—and courageous—teachers and shepherds.  

Here’s the situation Paul is addressing, and why it’s important for us. False teachers in Ephesus (Paul calls them goētes, “magicians,” by which he means charlatans or imposters—2 Timothy 3:13) have woven a spell of an “over-realized eschatology” (the mistaken notion that the resurrection is “already,” and there is no “not yet”). They agree that the new life is our born-again life. But they depart into a non-Christian direction by teaching that “now” is all there is. In other words, it’s in this life that you need to maximize your possibilities, your potential, your prestige, and your pleasure. What it led to in Timothy’s church is what it has led to throughout the history of the church: rank narcissism. To deny the need for resurrection is to deny that sin still besets us and that it must die one last death at Jesus’ return. Ironically, this false teaching opens the floodgates to an unbridled religion of self.  

It is not accidental that Paul’s list of vices opens with lovers of themselves and closes with lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God. Everything in between is about building up oneself and destroying others. Religion stressing only the “already” with no room for the “not yet” cannot help but produce a self-serving and abusive lifestyle. Whatever appearance of godliness such teaching maintains, it has nothing of the Spirit of God about it. The only power it knows is Satan’s, not God’s.  

Chief among Paul’s antidotes for Timothy (and for us) is the Scriptures (by which Paul means our Old Testament, but for us includes the New Testament). The Scriptures are entirely trustworthy. They are the very breath of God, and they find their coherence (make you wise for salvation through faith) in Christ Jesus (2 Timothy 3:15,16).  

When he writes, “All Scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, so that everyone who belongs to God may be proficient, equipped for every good work,” Paul characterizes the Old Testament’s benefit using four terms that have been much discussed. It is probably best to understand them as a Jewish Christian’s use of the traditional categories of Scripture.  

First, teaching: the Law told the story of God’s redemption of his people and spelled out implications for life in covenant with him.  

Second, reproof: the Prophets had brought God’s covenantal lawsuit against his rebellious people; the Prophets wrote in such a way as to convict an erring people of their waywardness, pointing them to One in whose sufferings and glory their hope lay.  

Third, correction: in the so-called Writings (the Psalms and the wisdom literature), God had provided songs and sayings designed to realign his people’s hearts with his own heart, teaching them to lament and rejoice and live in accordance with his wisdom.  

Finally, there is training in righteousness: an all-encompassing term for education and spiritual formation in Paul’s world. With this last phrase, Paul indicates that the world’s highest aspirations for wisdom are more than met in the account of redemption in Christ, long anticipated and embedded in Israel’s Scriptures.  

Collect for Proper 28. Blessed Lord, who caused all holy Scriptures to be written for our learning: Grant us so to hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them, that we may embrace and ever hold fast the blessed hope of everlasting life, which you have given us in our Savior Jesus Christ; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen. 

Be blessed this day,  

Reggie Kidd+ 

Our Blessings Come From the Gracious Giver - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Thursday • 2/13/2025 •
Week of 5 Epiphany 

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 83; Psalm 146; Psalm 147; Isaiah 60:1–17; 2 Timothy 2:14–26; Mark 10:17–31 

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

Welcome to Daily Office Devotions, where every Monday through Friday we consider some aspect of that day’s Scripture readings, as given in the Book of Common Prayer. I’m Reggie Kidd, and I’m grateful to be with you. This is Thursday of the fifth week of Epiphany, the “manifestation” of God’s glory in Jesus Christ.   

One of the most important lessons a course in Driver’s Education teaches is not to over-compensate if the car starts to swerve out of control. Over-compensating is the fastest way to spin completely out of control.  

A master-teacher of pastoral theology, Paul teaches Timothy a similar lesson. Paul has told his young protégé that he needs to see himself as a soldier in Christ’s army (2 Timothy 2:2–3). But when his authority is challenged and he needs to “fight,” Timothy needs to do so without falling into the youthful trap of overcompensating and becoming quarrelsome and pugnacious. “Shun youthful passions and pursue righteousness, faith, love, and peace, along with those who call on the Lord from a pure heart. Have nothing to do with stupid and senseless controversies; you know that they breed quarrels. And the Lord’s servant must not be quarrelsome but kindly to everyone, an apt teacher, patient, correcting opponents with gentleness” (2 Timothy 2:22–25).  

The situation is this: Timothy’s opponents have wrongly concluded that Christ’s resurrection in the past is the only resurrection that’s going to happen. False teachers, Paul says, “have swerved from the truth by claiming that the resurrection has already taken place. They are upsetting the faith of some” (2 Timothy 2:18). They have probably inferred that our new birth or regeneration in this life (see John 5:24; Ephesians 2:4–7) is all the resurrection we are going to receive. The consequence is a theology that says: “This life is all you have, so go for the gold now. Demand your best life right now!” That approach had had devastating consequences in Corinth, where believers were suing each other and allowing the Lord’s Supper to become a showcase for the display between the “haves” (God’s “somebodies”) and the “have nots” (God’s “nobodies”— see 1 Corinthians 1:26–29; 6:1–8; 11:27–34).  

Image: The Rich Young Ruler, stained glass, Cathedral Church of St. Luke, Orlando, FL 

To mount a measured resistance against foolish teaching like this, Paul reminds Timothy of several things. 

First, it’s important not to get mired down in trivial arguments about meaningless words. Paul wants Timothy (and us too!) to prioritize, and to pick his (and our!) battles. Not everything is worth fighting over. The resurrection is, but many other things are not.  

Second, all ideas that seem to be progressive aren’t necessarily so. The opponents are claiming a kind of advancement over a seemingly boring and staid orthodoxy that calls for waiting for a future resurrection. Their heresy will cause something to grow, and it will be an advancement of something; but it is the growth of disease, not health, the advancement of decay, not well-being. Paul likens the effect of their teaching to gangrene, which is the progressive dying of body tissue due to lack of blood. The false teachers’ your-best-life-now mindset will promote greed, not generosity; selfishness, not servanthood; viciousness, not love. And so, Timothy must stay at his post, and be “an apt teacher, patient, correcting opponents with gentleness” (2 Timothy 2:24–25).   

Third, the reason that Timothy can be both resolute and gentle is that he can rest in the confidence that the Lord is sovereign and in control. “But God’s firm foundation stands, bearing this inscription: ‘The Lord knows those who are his’” (2 Timothy 2:19). Timothy stands in the line of Isaiah who had cried out to a people suffering in exile: “Arise, shine; for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you” (Isaiah 60:1). In that day, God was going to bring about a new exodus, a return from exile, that his people could never have engineered for themselves. Timothy’s God is that very same God, the One who builds “the City of the Lord, the Zion of the Holy One of Israel” (Isaiah 60:14).  

Timothy’s God is also the God in whom Jesus had invited the rich man in Mark to trust, the God of generous provision. Jesus invites the man to step into a whole new level of trust in God: “Jesus, looking at him, loved him and said, ‘You lack one thing; go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.’” Jesus’s loving desire was that the man realize the blessings in his life did not come from his riches, but from the gracious giver of all good gifts. In addition to his love for the man, Jesus has confidence in the sovereign goodness of his God and Father. Even though he does so sadly, Jesus can step back and allow the man to walk away, because (I think) he knows the man’s story is not over, and is in the best hands it could possibly be in.  

Finally, the reason that Timothy can be straightforward in defending the truth but not be defensive in doing so, is that he will be giving God room to grant repentance. Here, I think, is the sense of the last portion of today’s epistle: “Correct opponents with gentleness. God may perhaps grant that they will repent and come to know the truth, and that they may escape from the snare of the devil, having been held captive by him [the devil] to do His will [i.e., ironically, God’s will]” (2 Timothy 2:25b–26). Timothy can lead with what Paul calls elsewhere “the meekness and gentleness of Christ” (2 Cor 10:1), and leave the convicting to God himself.  

A good lesson in “speaking the truth in love” (Ephesians 4:15) for all of us! 

Be blessed this day,  

Reggie Kidd+ 

Jesus Encourages Us to Come to Him - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Wednesday • 2/12/2025 •
Week of 5 Epiphany 

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 119:97–120; Isaiah 59:15b–21; 2 Timothy 1:15–2:13; Mark 10:1–16 

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

Welcome to Daily Office Devotions, where every Monday through Friday we ask how God might direct our lives from that day’s Scripture readings, as given in the Book of Common Prayer. I’m Reggie Kidd, and I’m grateful to be with you this Wednesday of the fifth week of Epiphany. We are in Year 1 of the Daily Office Lectionary. 

When it’s all become just too much… When you’re ready to walk away from everything, and say, “I’ve had enough: enough responsibility, enough feeling of failure, enough worry and anxiety,” — what keeps you going?  

What keeps me going is Paul reminding Timothy (and through Timothy, me): “…he [Christ] remains faithful, for he cannot deny himself” (2 Timothy 2:13).  

Time and again in 2 Timothy, Paul prompts Timothy to remember examples, and counterexamples, of faithfulness. Clearly, Paul wants Timothy to emulate the faithful, like his mother and grandmother, Onesiphorus, Paul himself, and Christ. Moreover, Paul wants Timothy to identify “faithful people” and to train them so they can pass on the faith (2 Timothy 2:2). And Paul wants Timothy to avoid the counterexamples: Phygelus and Hermogenes who abandoned Paul, and Hymenaeus and Philetus who are intentionally teaching falsehoods to oppose Paul (1:15; 2:17).  

Image: Christ Blessing the Children, stained glass, Cathedral Church of St. Luke, Orlando, FL 

In the context of putting before Timothy examples and counterexamples of faithfulness to the gospel and courage in ministry, Paul creates (or quotes) some poetic lines (some scholars think Paul draws upon an early Christian hymn): 

11 If we have died with him (that is, Jesus), we will also live with him; 
12  if we endure, we will also reign with him; 
      if we deny him, he will also deny us; 
13 if we are faithless, he remains faithful— 
    for he cannot deny himself. (2 Timothy 2:11–13) 

Notice that there are four “if” clauses. Each of the first three “ifs” is followed by an “also.” The logic for these three clauses is a natural “if ‘x’ …, then also ‘y’ ….” One thing follows another. A person receives the expected result of their action. If we have shared in Christ’s death, then it follows that we will also live with him (Romans 6:8). If we endure, it follows that we will also reign with him (Romans 5:17; 8:17).  

The third “if” clause still has an “also,” but it is otherwise unusual in its construction. It has a future tense in the Greek, which is difficult to bring out in English: “if we will deny him.” It’s a form of expression that Greek writers use to express something they don’t want, or that they fear and are trying to avoid. The gist is this: If, lamentably, on the last day, we should deny Jesus, he will have to deny us. That is what Jesus, in fact, said during his earthly ministry: “…but whoever denies me before others, I also will deny before my Father in heaven” (Matthew 10:33). This is the trajectory of life, Paul fears, that those he denounces are on. 

But it’s the fourth “if” clause that gives interpreters pause: “if we are faithless.” What stands out is that there’s no “also” following it. In this case, the faithless person does not get the expected result. What Paul has learned in his own life is that despite his faithlessness, he has received mercy. “Christ Jesus our Lord … judged me faithful (understood, even though I wasn’t!) … I received mercy because I had acted ignorantly in unbelief (or faithlessness), and the grace of our Lord overflowed for me with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus” (1 Timothy 1:12–14). The faith (or faithfulness) that was not in him, Paul says, came to him as a gift because they were “in Jesus.” Where Paul was faithless, he confesses, Jesus was faithful on his behalf. Where he was loveless and deserving of no mercy, Jesus was love and mercy on his behalf. That’s who Jesus is, “for he cannot deny himself.”   

Paul wants to fortify Timothy (and us) by reminding him (and us) of the utter grace of God in the face of apprehension, indecisiveness, or timidity. Despite the constant temptation to run and hide, Timothy can trust Christ to provide the courage he cannot find in himself. Even in our faithlessness, our final hope is the faithfulness of Christ, “for he cannot deny himself.” As Jesus bid the children come to him (Mark 10:14-16), he likewise encourages us to come, too. If we put our hand out to him, he will securely clasp it with his own.  Once he has taken hold of us, he cannot let go. That’s who he is.  

Be blessed this day, 

Reggie Kidd+ 

We Are Called - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Tuesday • 2/11/2025 •
Week of 5 Epiphany 

This morning’s Scriptures are: This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 78:1–39; Isaiah 59:1–15a; 2 Timothy 1:1–14; Mark 9:42–50  

This morning’s Canticles are: following the OT reading, Canticle 13 (“A Song of Praise,” BCP, p. 90); following the Epistle reading, Canticle 18 (“A Song to the Lamb,” Revelation 4:11; 5:9–10, 13, BCP, p. 93) 

Welcome to Daily Office Devotions, where every Monday through Friday we draw insights from that day’s Scripture readings, as given in the Book of Common Prayer. I’m Reggie Kidd, and I’m grateful to be with you. This is Tuesday of the fifth week of Epiphany, and we are in Year 1 of the Daily Office Lectionary.   

Isaiah: a call to justice and truth. Justice is dead among God’s people because they don’t care about what is true. “Justice is far from us,” because, Isaiah says, “truth is lacking” (Isaiah 59:9,15). “No one goes to court honestly; they rely on empty pleas, they speak lies, conceiving mischief and begetting iniquity” (Isaiah 59:4).  

Throughout chapters forty through sixty-six of the Book of Isaiah, the prophet is preparing the children of Israel to return to their homeland. He means more than just a physical re-acquisition of their birthright. He means a complete reinhabiting of their identity as God’s “peculiar people,” a “holy priesthood,” a “kingdom of priests.” Isaiah calls God’s people to covenant renewal—to being the point of the spear in God’s campaign to reclaim this planet that has fallen temporarily to the power of darkness, death, decay, evil, injustice, and lovelessness. God is calling them once again to be the one people among the entire human race where the halls ring with truth, and where courts reward good and hold evil and folly to account.  

In later books, notably Ezra and Nehemiah, we will see efforts toward this end: a recapturing of a reverent reading of Scripture, and the realigning of lives in accordance with the description of the flourishing and faithful life given in the Law of Moses.  

I submit that if there is hope for a church that ministers in a world like ours, where, as in Isaiah’s day, “truth is lacking,” this hope lies down the same path: forsaking the downgrading of Scripture as a merely human witness and a merely negotiable life-option. It means learning to re-read it as God’s story and as divine prescription for human flourishing. Even where (especially where) it steps on our toes!  

2 Timothy: a call to courage and suffering. Who hasn’t felt like they are in over their heads? Timothy sure did, when, despite his youth, his mentor called him to lead the church in Ephesus, one of the largest churches of the new Christian movement! In an earlier letter, Paul urges Timothy: “Don’t let them despise your youth” (1 Timothy 4:12).  

In this letter, Paul calls upon his young protégé to do his forebears proud, and to fight like a good soldier, even to the point of suffering in the same way his Savior had done and as Paul, his martyr-in-preparation mentor, was currently doing. In a word, Paul urges upon Timothy the virtue of courage: “God did not give us a spirit of cowardice, but rather a spirit of power and of love and of self-discipline” (2 Timothy 1:7). Bracing words. Sobering words. But words filled with the promise of God’s renewing work by the Spirit.  

God has unleashed the “power of God for salvation” upon the earth. Timothy’s job is to proclaim that truth. In the face of those who claim that death is the end (more about that on Thursday), Timothy must bravely proclaim the truth that “the appearing of our Savior Christ Jesus [has] abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel” (2 Timothy 1:10).  

Paul advises that Timothy’s love for his mother, his grandmother, his “father” in the faith (Paul), and most of all, for the Savior who suffered on his behalf, must ready him for his own share in those sufferings.  

And when everything in Timothy screams that he should turn and run, the Spirit who gives self-control gives him the principal thing that marks every good soldier: the sheer unwillingness to do anything to betray those who are counting on him. “Hold to the standard of sound words you heard from me and do so with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus” (2 Timothy 1:13 NET). In other words, hold to the same faith the Lord Jesus showed in his Father to vindicate him on the far side of death, and the same love for lost sinners that led Jesus to spread his arms on the hard wood of the cross. Or, as Paul will tell Timothy in the next chapter: “Take your share of sufferings like a good soldier” (2 Timothy 2:3).  

Mark: a call to self-control and love. The strongest, most graphic exhortations Jesus ever gives are these about cutting off a hand or a foot, or cutting out an eye, if that’s what it takes to control our impulses. The recommendations to do so are hyperbolic, but they make their point powerfully. Every one of us would do well to give them serious thought, because we all have trouble saying “No!” to something.  

What may be easy to overlook here is the way Jesus brackets this portion of his teaching with considerations of love: caring about the “little ones” who believe in him, and being “at peace with one another” (Mark 9:42,50). The sad fact is that the indulgence of “secret sins” or of seemingly private acts of pleasure-seeking is not at all victimless. Alcoholics tend to abuse. Cultivators of an alternative reality of their own fantasy treat real people callously, even sometimes brutally.  

It’s just possible that that pausing to count what my self-indulgence could cost somebody else, and asking instead, “What would love do here?” and, “What would make for peace?”— doing so will lead to a far better result both for myself and for people around me.  

Collect for the 5th Sunday after the Epiphany. Set us free, O God, from the bondage of our sins, and give us the liberty of that abundant life which you have made known to us in your Son our Savior Jesus Christ; who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen. 

Be blessed this day,  

Reggie Kidd+ 

The Rule of the Israel of God - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Monday • 2/10/2025 •
Week of 5 Epiphany 

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 80; Isaiah 58:1–12; Galatians 6:11–18; Mark 9:30–41 

This morning’s Canticles are: following the OT reading, Canticle 9 (“The First Song of Isaiah,” Isaiah 12:2–6, BCP, p. 86); following the Epistle reading, Canticle 19 (“The Song of the Redeemed,” Revelation 15:3–4, BCP, p. 94) 

Welcome to Daily Office Devotions, where every Monday through Friday we explore that day’s Scripture readings, as given in the Book of Common Prayer. I’m Reggie Kidd. Thanks for joining me. This is Monday of the fifth week of Epiphany, and we are in Year 1 of the Daily Office Lectionary. 

New creation in Galatians. Paul closes his letter to the Galatians with a flourish. It was customary for a person who had dictated the body of a letter to take the pen and write the conclusion in their own hand. Thereby, they could certify the authenticity of the letter and crisply summarize its contents. With his “large letters,” Paul emphatically confirms that this letter—this great charter of Christian freedom—is his. And in his own hand, he encapsulates his main point: “[A] new creation is everything!” Putting on a show of ultra-piety doesn’t matter. What matters is taking one’s place in the death of Christ in such a way that “the world is crucified to me and I to the world” (Galatians 6:14). What matters is belonging to “the Israel of God” that is being refashioned to include all who, by faith, are sons of Abraham and daughters of Sarah, and experiencing the peace and mercy that belong to those who “follow this rule” (Galatians 6:16).  

What marks “the Israel of God” in Isaiah. For his part, Isaiah reasserts what has always been the rule for people who experience Yahweh’s redeeming and rescuing love. It is not their hyper-spirituality that aligns their hearts with Yahweh’s and draws them near to him—their fasting and self-humiliation in sackcloth and ashes (Isaiah 58:2,3). When it masks injustice, oppression of workers, quarreling, fighting, “striking with a wicked fist,” tolerating hunger, homelessness, and nakedness among their own kin (Isaiah 58:4,5,7), all the fancy “religious” activity in the world amounts to nothing.  

In fact, it’s worse than nothing—it’s active rebellion! Even as Isaiah promises a new exodus, he calls for a return to the ethical logic of the exodus. Those who have had their own bonds of oppression loosed do the same for others. Those who have been brought home do all they can for the homeless among them. Those who have enjoyed the bountiful table of the Lord share their table with the hungry. To do so, as Paul puts it above, is to follow the rule of the Israel of God.  

Image: Adaptation, stained glass, Cathedral Church of St. Luke, Orlando, FL 

“Following the rule” in Mark. “Then they came to Capernaum; and when he was in the house he asked them, “What were you arguing about on the way?” But they were silent, for on the way they had argued with one another who was the greatest” — Mark 9:33–34. Jesus extends following the rule of the Israel of God to guarding our hearts from seeking privilege and status in our service to him. Setting a little child before his disciples, Jesus points to the least and the littlest among us, and says basically, “Serve me in them” (Mark 9:36–37). He extends the rule to treating charitably others who follow him, but who do it differently than we do—whether it’s different manifestations of the Spirit, whether it’s a different style of worship, whether it’s different priorities in ministry. The “rule” of “the Israel of God” is: “Whoever is not against us is for us” (Mark 9:40).  

Oh, for the rule of the Israel of God to prevail among us, for the reality of “a new creation” to pervade followers of Jesus Christ, for us to be crucified to the world (and its way of measuring worth and getting things done) and the world to be crucified to us! 

Be blessed this day, 

Reggie Kidd+  

The Spirit Empowers - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Friday • 2/7/2025 •
Week of 4 Epiphany 

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 88; Isaiah 61:1–9; 2 Timothy 3:1–17; Mark 10:32–45 

This morning’s Canticles are: following the OT reading, Canticle 10 (“The Second Song of Isaiah,” Isaiah 55:6–11; BCP, p. 86); following the Epistle reading, Canticle 18 (“A Song to the Lamb,” Revelation 4:11; 5:9–10, 13, BCP, p. 93) 

Welcome to Daily Office Devotions, where every Monday through Friday we bring to our lives that day’s Scripture readings, as given in the Book of Common Prayer. I’m Reggie Kidd, and I’m grateful to be with you this Friday of the fourth week of the Epiphany of Christ.   

Transfiguration in Mark. The prelude to today’s reading about Jesus’s Transfiguration is yesterday’s reading about Peter’s confession of Jesus’s Messiahship, and Jesus’s setting Peter straight about Messiah’s mission. It’s a cautionary tale against recreating Christ in our own image, demanding salvation on our own terms, and projecting our expectations onto a Messiah of our own manufacture. Bad idea! The only way to say “Yes!” to Jesus’s Messiahship, is to accept his sufferings, his cross, his resurrection, and our place in his story  

With today’s account of Jesus’s Transfiguration, we get a brief glimpse into the glory of his resurrection. Moses’s and Elijah’s appearance with him bears promise that we will share in the likeness of that glory. Jesus did not come to let himself be made over into our image—despite countless attempts throughout history to do precisely that. He came to make us over into his. As early theologians put it, “He became what we are that we might become what he is.”  

Whether it’s revolutionaries, reactionaries, therapists, marketers, or self-help gurus, those who assume they know the messianic plan ahead of time get the same rebuke Peter did: “Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things” (Mark 8:33). But for those who are willing to let Jesus be Jesus, and who are ready to find in his cross the way of life and peace, all the promise of a new heaven and a new earth, and of our own transfigured life there, lies ahead. Amen!  

Image: Detail from stained glass, Cathedral Church of St. Luke, Orlando, FL 

Transformation in Galatians. But God doesn’t just promise transfiguration at the end of time. He is interested in transformation right now. Galatian believers had sought transformation through law-obedience. The law will only prompt what Paul calls the “works of the flesh,” of which he provides a compendious list of examples, ranging from sins of the spirit to sins of the body (Galatians 5:19–21). Instead, according to Paul, the Spirit of the age to come has invaded this life, in order to begin the transformation of our lives.  A more accurate translation of Galatians 5:16 is this one: “But I say, live by the Spirit and you will not carry out the desires of the flesh (NET).” In the Greek, the second half of that sentence is a very strong promise. The Spirit will empower a life that the law can’t.  

God sends the Spirit of his Son into our lives to make us over us in the direction of that transfiguration. That transformation will one day be complete when our glorified Lord returns in victory to glorify us. Jesus’s work in us, by the Spirit, is to change us over into the very image of Jesus himself. Doing so, the Spirit produces all the things the law had pointed to but could never actually put into us: “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control” (Galatians 5:22). And this list climaxes in the splendid litotes (an understatement in which an affirmative is expressed by negating its opposite): “Against such things there is no law” (Galatians 5:32 NET), meaning that this list comprises the very life—the Jesus life—that the deeper reading of the law was supposed to incline us toward in the first place.  

Togetherness in Isaiah. For a brief moment, Isaiah looks with a wide-angle lens at Yahweh’s plan for human transformation. Anyone who keeps covenant is welcome into God’s holy temple, including “foreigners” and “eunuchs” whom the law of Moses had explicitly excluded from intimate fellowship with Yahweh and his people (Exodus 12:43; Deuteronomy 23:1). God’s ultimate design is that his place of worship serve as “a house of prayer for all peoples” (Isaiah 56:7). And so all those who “join themselves to the Lord, to minister to him, to love the name of the Lord, and to be his servants” are welcome in that house.  

In Isaiah’s day, joining oneself to Yahweh and loving Yahweh’s name meant keeping sabbath and practicing circumcision. In Paul’s day and ours, keeping covenant means finding sabbath-rest in Christ (Colossians 2:17; Matthew 11:28–30) and in undergoing, not circumcision, but baptism, the new sign of membership in God’s covenant family. “[F]or in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith. As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus. And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to the promise” (Galatians 3:26–29).  

I pray the vision of Christ’s transfiguration makes us long for the day when he returns, and we receive our share in the glory of his resurrection. I pray the Spirit of God fills our lives right now with power to transform us into the likeness of Jesus. I pray that we never outlive our love for Jesus, who puts all who trust him together in the same family, side by side in the waters of baptism and elbow to elbow at the same Table.  

Be blessed this day,  

Reggie Kidd+ 

It's Free - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Thursday • 2/6/2025 •
Week of 4 Epiphany 

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

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

Welcome to Daily Office Devotions, where every Monday through Friday we consider some aspect of that day’s Scripture readings, as given in the Book of Common Prayer. I’m Reggie Kidd, and I’m grateful to be with you. This is Thursday of the fourth week of Epiphany, the “manifestation” of God’s glory in Jesus Christ.   

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Live in that freedom, and be blessed this day, 

Reggie Kidd+ 

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

Wednesday • 2/5/2025 •
Week of 4 Epiphany 

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

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

Welcome to Daily Office Devotions, where every Monday through Friday we ask how God might direct our lives from that day’s Scripture readings, as given in the Book of Common Prayer. I’m Reggie Kidd, and I’m grateful to be with you this Wednesday of the fourth week of Epiphany. We are in Year 1 of the Daily Office Lectionary. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Be blessed this day, 

Reggie Kidd+ 

Bread for the World - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Tuesday • 2/4/2025 •
Week of 4 Epiphany 

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

This morning’s Canticles are: following the OT reading, Canticle 13 (“A Song of Praise,” BCP, p. 90); following the Epistle reading, Canticle 18 (“A Song to the Lamb,” Revelation 4:11; 5:9–10, 13, BCP, p. 93) 

Welcome to Daily Office Devotions, where every Monday through Friday we draw insights from that day’s Scripture readings, as given in the Book of Common Prayer. I’m Reggie Kidd, and I’m grateful to be with you. This is Tuesday of the fourth week of Epiphany, and we are in Year 1 of the Daily Office Lectionary.   

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

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

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

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

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

Image: Berthold Werner, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons 

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

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

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

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

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

Be blessed this day,  

Reggie Kidd+