Truth is Lacking - Daily Devotions with the Dean
Lord of the Feast - Daily Devotions with the Dean
Midday Eucharist
Daily Devotions with the Dean
This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 46; Psalm 97; Isaiah 52:7–10; Revelation 21:22–27; Matthew 12:14–21
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)
Feast of Epiphany. January 6 is, by tradition, the day we remember the three magi from the East who bring to the Christ Child gifts of frankincense (in recognition of his deity), gold (in acknowledgement of his royalty), and myrrh (in anticipation of his sacrificial death):
Born a king on Bethlehem’s plain;
Gold I bring to crown Him again
King forever, ceasing never
Over us all to reign.
Frankincense to offer have I;
Incense owns a Deity nigh;
Prayer and praising, voices raising,
Worshiping God on high.
Myrrh is mine, its bitter perfume
Breaths a life of gathering gloom;
Sorrowing, sighing, bleeding dying
Sealed in the stone-cold tomb.
The remarkable thing about the trek of the magi (probably Persian astrologer-priests) is that, according to Matthew 2, they are led to Jesus not by Holy Scripture but by some celestial sign, whether a visible alignment of objects in the heavens, the reading of an astrological chart, or something altogether unique and unknown to us. The point is that the magi represent “the nations” being drawn by their own devices to Israel’s—and therefore the world’s—the King of kings and Lord of lords. Praise be!
Today’s readings in the Daily Office contemplate the wonder of Israel’s God drawing all peoples and all nations to himself as he manifests—the Greek word epiphania means “manifestation”—his glory.
In Isaiah 52, God redeems Jerusalem in the sight of all the nations. All the nations “see the salvation of our God.” In Revelation 21, the kings of the earth “bring their glory into” the City of God.
Most remarkably and wonderfully, Matthew 12 portrays Jesus as altogether reticent during his earthly ministry to publish his fame. He is here to heal the sick and bind up the broken—to draw his people and the nations through his quiet love, not bombastic displays of ego. He has come for all the “bruised reeds” and “smoldering wicks.” There will be no small irony in the way he brings “justice to victory.”
His leadership is one of service, not ego-inflation. His words are encouraging, not rancorous. When one of his followers uses a sword in his defense he says: “Enough!!” (meaning, “Stand down!”). Even as he hangs on the cross he cries out, “Father, forgive them!” There in the sacrifice of the cross he manifests his true deity and royalty. He trusts his Heavenly Father to transform his crown of thorns into a crown of gold. As Matthew says, may you and I hope in his name … and in no other.
Be blessed this day,
Reggie Kidd+
Daily Devotions with the Dean
This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 2; Psalm 110; Joshua 1:1–9; Hebrews 11:32–12:2; John 15:1–16
(See my comments about “abiding” in Christ in John 15:1–11, from April 22, 2020.)
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)
Strength and Courage from the True Vine. When Jesus says, “I am the True Vine” (John 15:1), he evokes so many vivid biblical images. Today we read this passage alongside Joshua 1’s exhortation to be “strong and courageous,” and alongside Hebrews 11’s tribute to those whose faith had made them just that: strong and courageous.
Joshua 1 (and Numbers 14) and the Call to Courage. Forty years prior to Yahweh’s challenge to Joshua to be “strong and courageous,” Joshua had shown exactly this sort of mettle when he and his fellow spies returned from their reconnoitering of the Promised Land. As a kind of first fruit of what that land had to offer, the scouts brought back with them a cluster of grapes so large that it took two men to carry it: “…they…cut down from there a branch with a single cluster of grapes, and they carried it on a pole between two of them” (Numbers 14:22). Ten of the returning twelve scouts were cowed by the challenge of taking the land. Two—Joshua and Caleb—saw the promise. It was as though they could taste already the goodness of the land and the sweetness of the wine that these grapes promised. Because Yahweh had promised to give them the land, Joshua and Caleb had shown fortitude and resolve. Unlike the other ten men, they are ready to move forward. Distrusting that promise, the others displayed cowardice and sloth.
In John’s Gospel, the last of Jesus’s great “I AM” sayings—Jesus’s claim to be “the True Vine”—is a challenge to us to embrace the same kind of resolve that Joshua and Caleb had displayed. In the Eucharistic wine, not only do we “drink the blood” of his sacrifice for our sins, but we celebrate in advance the marriage supper of the Lamb. The Eucharistic wine looks back and it looks forward. We remember our exodus, and we anticipate our entrance into “the glory about to be revealed to us” (Romans 8:18). In Jesus, therefore, we find strength and courage to walk by the same sort of faith exemplified in Joshua and by the saints of Hebrews 11—Gideon, Barak, Samson, et al.
Most of all, we find here at the Table of the True Vine the persevering courage to follow Jesus himself, “the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, who for the sake of the joy that was set before him endured the cross, disregarding its shame, and has taken his seat at the right hand of the throne of God” (Hebrews 12:2).
John 15 and the Command to Love. Nowhere, perhaps, is such courage and strength more necessary than in finding the capacity to love each other with the love that Jesus commands at the end of today’s passage in John: “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you” (John 15:12–14). We are his friends, he says, so our motives are no longer slavish fear of punishment. Now our motives are the genuine confidence of knowing the affection of the one who has called us friend—and who has laid down his life for us. This friend calls us to do for one another what he has done for us.
I am grateful—relational coward that I can be—for examples in my life of people who have loved me this way. I pray that you have friends like that, friends who have shown that “the way of the cross” is “the way of life.” Regardless, our Heavenly Friend—the great “I AM” who has come in sandaled feet—has loved us enough to lay down his life for us. He chose us. We didn’t choose him. And he chose us to be his friends (John 15:15–16). Now he has appointed us, he adds, to bear this fruit: to love others as he has loved us. And so I pray that this next year, God grants all of us the strength and courage to love as we have been loved.
Be blessed this day,
Reggie Kidd+
Daily Devotions with the Dean
This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 85; Psalm 87; Exodus 3:1–12; Hebrews 11:23–31; John 14:6–14
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)
Last Monday’s celebration of the Feast of St. John provided the opportunity to consider the soaring perspective of John’s written portrait of Christ. John details how the Bible’s great “I AM” takes onto himself a human body, and comes among us with sandaled feet. For the days that immediately follow January 1’s Feast of the Holy Name, the Daily Office lingers over some of Jesus’s “I AM” statements in John’s Gospel.
John. Today’s reading reminds us that Jesus says, “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6). As the Way, Jesus doesn’t simply point us in a certain direction. He guides us along the way. As the Truth, Jesus doesn’t just hand us a book of truths He becomes our teacher. As the Life, Jesus doesn’t merely accessorize our life. He becomes our life. I am so grateful for that grand reality.
Exodus and Moses. Our understanding of Christ is always enhanced when we see him against the backdrop of the Old Testament.
Exodus. Moses first encounters the great “I AM”—Yahweh himself—in the burning bush on Mount Sinai. His feet are on holy ground, and so he must remove his sandals. Yahweh promises deliverance for the people whose sufferings at the hands of their oppressors have moved him. What is striking to me is that the “sign” he gives by which his people will know that they are finally free is that they will be able to return to this wilderness-mountain to worship him: “I will be with you; and this shall be the sign for you that it is I who sent you: when you have brought the people out of Egypt, you shall worship God on this mountain” (Exodus 3:12).
The whole point, then, of gaining freedom is not to win accountability-free, consequence-free self-expression, but to enter into a relationship consisting of worship, service, and obedience to the great “I AM” himself. “Freedom” is not making up our own rules. Freedom is being won over by the amazing love of God, and loving him in return … and our neighbors as ourselves.
Oh, Dear Jesus, give us grace in this coming year to taste the freedom of finding our way to the Father through you—the Way, the Truth, and the Life.
Hebrews. And the means—the way—to this freedom is faith. The way to the Father goes through Christ. And the way to Christ goes through faith. In the heart of today’s gorgeous paragraph from Hebrews 11, the writer claims that millennia before Jesus Christ came to this earth, faith in him already motivated Moses: “[Moses] considered abuse suffered for the Christ to be greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt, for he was looking ahead to the reward” (Hebrews 11:26).
All the Old Testament heroes and heroines of the faith—(in today’s reading, Moses’s parents, Moses, the people who “passed through the Red Sea as if it were dry land,” and Rahab the prostitute of Jericho)—all these could only look ahead “by faith” to a Christ whose features they could barely catch a glimpse of from afar. It is as though they were looking through the wrong end of a time-telescope.
Our great privilege is that for us the telescope has been turned around. We “see” the one who has come in the flesh. The challenge to live by faith is still ours. But now we have not only the examples of those who came before, but also the living support of the Christ who has come and who right now “ever lives to intercede” for you and for me (Hebrews 7:25).
Throughout this pandemic season, members of our sister church, All Saints Episcopal Church in Winter Park, Florida, have been encouraging their neighbors with this sign in their front yards: “You Are Not Alone.” That is so true.
I pray that “by faith” you know the presence of the great “I AM.” I pray that Jesus is, or will become, the Way, the Truth, and the Life for you, all the way through the challenges and opportunities of 2021.
Be blessed this day,
Reggie Kidd+
Image: detail from The Burning Bush - Moses on Holy Ground, by Melani Pyke
Sunday Worship
Daily Devotions with the Dean
This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 103; Psalm 148; Genesis 17:1–12a,15–16; Colossians 2:6–12; John 16:23b–30
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)
Feast of the Holy Name.
In the Christian Year, the first day of the calendar year is the Feast of the Holy Name. This feast falls on the eighth day of Christmas, in recognition of the fact that, as Luke records, “After eight days had passed, it was time to circumcise the child; and he was called Jesus, the name given by the angel before he was conceived in the womb” (Luke 2:15).
It is Matthew who explains why the baby is to be given that particular name: “…for he will save his people from their sins” (Matthew 1:21 — the Hebrew Yeshua means “Yah saves!”). The cutting of his foreskin in this eighth day ceremony symbolizes how it is that Jesus is going to save us from our sins.
Three decades later, Paul explains how the one “in whom the fullness of deity dwells bodily” experienced a second circumcision. Paul calls Jesus’s being nailed to the cross “the circumcision of Christ” (Colossians 2:11). On the cross, Jesus’s whole being—not just a tiny piece of his flesh—is cut off from the land of the living. His death brings pardon for us, and his resurrection brings, right now, life from spiritual death for us, and, at his return, resurrection from physical death. And this amazing gift is precisely in line with what Isaiah had prophesied: “For he was cut off from the land of the living, stricken for the transgression of my people. … When you make his life an offering for sin, he shall see his offspring, and shall prolong his days …”(Isaiah 53:8,10).
The wonderful thing is that “the circumcision of Christ”—his being “cut off from the land of the living”—becomes our circumcision when we are plunged beneath the symbolically drowning waters of baptism: “In him also you were circumcised with a spiritual circumcision … when you were buried with him in baptism, you were also raised with him through faith in the power of God, who raised him from the dead” (Colossians 2:11–12).
In celebrating the Holy Name of Jesus, we also celebrate his naming us anew. Because he has saved us from our sins, we are no longer “Sinner,” but “Saint” (1 Corinthians 1:2)! No longer “Polluted,” but “Washed” (1 Corinthians 6:11)! No longer “Destined-for-the-Scrap-Heap,” but “Treasured” (Deuteronomy 7:6)! The Vineyard Ministries song writer D. Butler put it magnificently in these lyrics, and rendered here by the Nesbitt family:
I will change your name.
You shall no longer be called:
Wounded, Outcast, Lonely, or Afraid
I will change your name.
Your new name shall be:
Confidence, Joyfulness, Overcoming One,
Faithfulness, Friend of God, One who seeks my face.
The whole thought is consistent with the renaming that takes place when God first gives the gift of circumcision in Genesis 17. There are new names and new identities for Abram who becomes Abraham, and for Sarai who becomes Sarah. His name will no longer mean simply “Exalted Father,” but “Father of a Multitude.” Hers will no longer mean (perhaps) “Mockery,” but “Princess.”
No matter what the past looks like, I pray your future will be shaped by your “new name”—the one you received in your baptism in Christ.
(And if that baptism hasn’t happened yet, we can talk about how to make it happen!)
Be blessed this day,
Reggie Kidd+
Image: detail from The Divine Journey - Companions of Love and Hope, Janet McKenzie
Noonday Prayer
Daily Devotions with the Dean
This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 46; Psalm 48; Isaiah 26:1–9; 2 Corinthians 5:16–6:2; John 8:12–19
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)
I don’t know how many times I’ve heard something like this recently: “I will be so glad to put 2020 in the rearview mirror!”
The year we close out today has indeed been a hard one. And it does look like some things are turning around: a vaccine against the coronavirus is becoming available, and the melodrama around who lives at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue seems to be coming to an end.
But truth be told, there are no guarantees that 2021 will be any better. It is not at all clear how we are going to climb out of the economic hole we are in. There is still a serious reckoning with race ahead of us in this country. Many people feel that time is running out on us when it comes to environmental issues, or “creation care.” Many people have been traumatized and emotionally battered (some, in domestic abuse situations, literally battered) by the season we have been enduring. The year to come most certainly will bring its own drama. That’s the only thing we can count on.
Well, no, that’s not true:
God is our refuge and strength,
a very present help in trouble.
Therefore we will not fear, though the earth should change,
though the mountains shake in the heart of the sea;
though its waters roar and foam,
though the mountains tremble with its tumult (Psalm 46:1-3 NRSV).
Here’s truly something even more important that we can count on (pardon me for using the version that first introduced me to this verse): Thou dost keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee, because he trusts in thee (Isaiah 26:3 RSV). If there is security ahead—deep, lasting, unshakeable, inviolable peace of mind—it is available to those who trust in Yahweh’s trustworthiness. Frankly, it is available nowhere else.
Short, sweet, and to the point today: put your trust in the Lord—and keep it there. As he got you through 2020, he will get you through whatever lies ahead in 2021.
Be blessed this day,
Reggie Kidd+