Art and Shalom by Ryan Tindall
Review of Art and Faith by Makoto Fujimura (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2020)
Makoto Fujimura, an American artist of Japanese heritage and training, has put together a remarkable little book on the relationship of art—broadly construed—to faith. One would have to think so given the blurbs he received: who else can lay claim to endorsements from both a former Archbishop of Canterbury and Martin Scorsese? And yet, that is what he has done, and the plaudits from theologian and director are certainly deserved for his meditation on the sacred act of creating and creation, and on the role of faith and art in God’s world of abundance.
Abundance and making are the two key words to Fujimura’s view of art and faith. Abundance because God’s world is an abundant place, full of grace, and making because when we participate in making—the kind of making that the Greeks called poesis—we inject God’s abundance into a natural world that, without faith, would only be marked by scarcity. Making is also crucial in this sense because it is a rejection of the utilitarian and consumptive uses of the world. In making—in being artists—we participate in the world as God intended, as guardians and stewards in our exercise of dominion over the world. Accordingly, artist is a broad term, not only to define those like Fujimura who create and participate in the fine arts, but also to teachers, engineers, cooks, and businesspeople. It is to follow God’s pattern of creating out of love. The alternative is not only abuse of the world and its creatures, but abuse of ourselves as well, as our failure to participate in God’s making as makers ourselves leads us to be enslaved to the powers and principalities of the current age—in our case, patterns of consumeristic consumption.
Key to this process is realizing our place in the world and our role in God’s creation. God has chosen to reveal himself in a work of creativity: in a book. Additionally, we must recognize that God has not created us out of necessity and does not need us, but has created out of love. God’s abundant creation of love is greater than any creation born of necessity (not, at least in this case, the mother of invention). While many would look for God to simply “fix” what went wrong at the Fall, a stance towards redemption that Fujimura calls “plumbing theology” and which would make God into little more than a deus ex machina with a cosmic plunger, Jesus promises that he makes all things new. Similarly, the Holy Sprit in divine creativity does not need us, nor does the Spirit need art to be labeled Christian in able to reveal God and his truth to the world, but can speak through a Hemingway or Picasso.
The modern Christian world, per Fujimura, misunderstands this so fundamentally. Certain strains of Evangelicalism in particular can be prone to set up a rigid analytical and propositional faith that distrusts intuition and experience. But in rejecting intuition and experience—in rejecting art and relying only in analysis—we not only miss so much of what makes this world good, but we cannot but bow to the gods of pragmatism and consumption. Christians of old thought it was worth it to build extravagant cathedrals as a testament to God’s abundance, but many modern Christians seem to think it fitting to worship in a strip mall, as a tenant no different from a supermarket or department store. But this is not to participate in God’s abundance, but to kowtow to modern consumerism—with “church” as just one more option in the retail marketplace.
So much of this is tied up with other issues where the modern Church has misunderstood God as creator. Growing up in evangelical churches, I was trained to look forward to, as Fujimura puts it, a future that would go in up in flames. Much of my childhood was spent among Christians who expected God would bring history to a close in an apocalyptic fury, with raptures, anti-christs, and violent armageddons. Accordingly, a church engaged in culture war to save souls at all costs would be appropriate—even if such culture war means engaging in politics of hatred and wrath. But this is not God’s way. It would not be in the character of God as artist to create to only have his creation disappear. Jesus taught us to pray that his will would be done on earth just as it is in heaven, so that this world without end would be transformed anew, not annihilated.
Fujimura instead points at a positive vision for the Church and the Christian in the world, grounded in art. Seeing work as art, as participating in God’s making, transforms work. Seeing the Church as God’s abundant life in the world can lead us again to creating and sustaining the institutions the Church once built from the ground up and has lately ceded to the city of man, like universities and hospitals. A whole human and a whole human society joins together the intuitive and experiential with the rational and analytical, not as dualities, but as complementing parts of the human personality. And this whole human is not afraid of the darkness. God’s way is to shine into the darkness with light, to bound the darkness up and infuse it with his grace—to work, as Paul says, all things for the good. Fujimura gives the example of kintsugi, a form of Japanese pottery where broken pottery is reassembled with gold in the crevices binding it back together. The effects of the darkness remain but are redeemed, just as Jesus appeared to the disciples in a resurrected body still bearing the scars of his crucifixion.
We can see this clearly in the stories of Mary, Martha, and Lazarus. Mary, at Jesus’ feet, shows us the contemplative way, sitting quietly, taking in Jesus’ teaching. As the woman with the alabaster jar, she shows us the extravagant way, the way of God’s abundance. Fujimura points out as well that Martha, for all her fame as the one who Jesus gently rebukes for her judgment of Mary’s wastefulness, is the first to recognize and identify Jesus as who he says he is. Thus, both intuition and reason point us in the direction of Christ.
But the ultimate lesson is in the story of Jesus and Lazarus. When Lazarus died, Jesus wept. His tears over the darkness of the world, the evil of death and destruction of his creation, should be our tears as we encounter the same in our world today. But his tears should also inform our creativity, as he made all things new, resurrecting Lazarus. Lazarus then also informs our lives today, having seen and tasted death—he lived as one not afraid of death. For Fujimura, Lazarus is an example for how we ought to live: relaxed, confident, and faithful. Relaxed, confident, and faithful, actively participating in God’s creative process, and unafraid of the darkness of this present world—sounds like shalom to me.
Lord of Redemption - Daily Devotions with the Dean
Friday • 1/29/2021
Week of 3 Epiphany
This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 40; Psalm 54; Isaiah 50:1–11; Galatians 3:15–22; Mark 6:47–56
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)
Isaiah. Laced throughout Isaiah 40–55 are four “Servant Songs” (42:1–4; 49:1–6; 50:4–9; 52:13–53:12). As God’s servant, the nation Israel increasingly takes on the role of vicarious sufferer for the sins of the world. This suffering has received brief and anticipatory mention in the first two songs (Isaiah 42:4; 49:7). Today’s passage expands the theme, as Isaiah, with “the tongue of a teacher,” finds redemptive purpose in all that Israel has endured in facing the consequences of her own rebellion against Yahweh: “I gave my back to those who struck me, and my cheeks to those who pulled out the beard; I did not hide my face from insult and spitting” (Isaiah 50:6). Further, Isaiah hints here in Isaiah 50 at something that will become explicit in his fourth Servant Song (Isaiah 53): it is one particular Israelite, ultimately, who will be preeminent in suffering.
The Lord God has opened my ear,
and I was not rebellious,
I did not turn backward. …
The Lord God helps me;
therefore I have not been disgraced;
therefore I have set my face like flint,
and I know that I shall not be put to shame;
he who vindicates me is near (Isaiah 50:5,7–8)
Galatians. The glory of Paul’s writing is that he “gets it”! He gets it that God’s design was for a representative Israelite to suffer sin’s curse on behalf of all. He gets it that in Calvary’s shameful cross, a magnificent plan—a plan whose rough contours had been elegantly laid out in Scripture ahead of time—had come together.
In today’s passage in Galatians, Paul argues that God’s promises to Abraham always had one single offspring in mind (Paul’s point of departure is that the original text of Genesis 12:7 is “seed” in the singular). Israel’s blessing of the nations was to come through one particular descendant of Abraham. Paul also argues that the giving of the Mosaic law was never intended to nullify the promise made to Abraham. So, God never intended to set aside a relationship based on faith with one based on works.
Paul “gets it” that Christ’s incarnation is an embodiment of God’s faithfulness to his promises. Christ’s obedience is a demonstration of his own trust in his Father, and of his faithfulness to the divine mission given him by the Scriptures and the counsels of heaven. Paul “gets it” that the response that such faithfulness evokes from us can only be an answering faith. And thus, Paul concludes today’s passage with the stunning declaration (again, I prefer the New English Translation): “But the scripture imprisoned everything under sin so that the promise could be given—because of the faithfulness of Jesus Christ—to those who believe” (Galatians 3:22).
Mark. “And they were utterly astounded, for they did not understand about the loaves, but their hearts were hardened” — Mark 6:51b–52. Jesus’s disciples, says Mark, couldn’t understand Jesus’s power over the wind and the waves because they hadn’t understood the miracle of the loaves and the fishes earlier that day. What the feeding of the 5,000 from such a tiny supply foreshadows is the provision of forgiveness and life for the world from the self-giving of the one—Jesus Christ, “who gives his life as a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45). Jesus’s disciples can’t understand that Jesus is Lord of Creation until they understand that he is Lord of Redemption.
That’s a lesson for us as well. Before we look to Christ, the Lord of Creation, to fix our circumstances, our health, or our world, we do well to give him, as Lord of Redemption, thanks for releasing us by his ransoming death and victorious resurrection, from the captivity of sin, from the despair of death, and from the emptiness of life without God.
I pray all our lives today are full of wonder at Christ’s presence in everything we undertake; at the genuine sense of the Spirit’s leading in every moment; and at the utter faithfulness of our Heavenly Father for everything we need.
Be blessed this day,
Reggie Kidd+
Image: Adapted from
Ivan Aivazovsky, Jesus Walking on Water 1890
Every Tear is Stored in His Bottle - Daily Devotions with the Dean
Thursday • 1/28/2021
Week of 3 Epiphany
This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 50; Isaiah 49:13–23; Galatians 3:1–14; Mark 6:30–46
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)
Isaiah. In the face of our faithlessness, God’s faithfulness will prevail! In the face of our feeling unwanted, neglected, and abused, God’s mercy will prevail! In the face of the ground shifting beneath our feet and our losing our bearings in life, God’s steadfast love will prevail! That’s Isaiah’s message for God’s people. On the cusp of their release from Babylonian captivity he points to Yahweh’s comfort and compassion, and he cries out, “Sing for joy, O heavens, and exult, O earth; break forth, O mountains, into singing!” (Isaiah 49:13). It’s difficult for God’s people to join the song. The hurt is so fresh, so real. Israel still feels forsaken and forgotten (Isaiah 49:14).
Isaiah’s response is one for the ages: Can a woman forget her nursing child, or show no compassion for the child of her womb? — Isaiah 49:16a. Isaiah invites us to consider what is to him an unthinkable scenario, in order to make us understand that Yahweh’s “forgetfulness” towards his people is no more thinkable than that. This illustration’s power grows when you realize how truly thinkable the scenario has become. So many unwanted babies not making it out of the womb. So many adults in counseling offices recollecting childhoods of want, neglect, and abuse.
Even these may forget, yet I will not forget you. See, I have inscribed you on the palms of my hands…. — Isaiah 49:15b,16a. For Yahweh, there is no such thing as an unwanted baby. No moment of childhood neglect has been unnoticed, nor any instance of want or abuse. Not a single person has been forgotten. No one who has entrusted themselves to his care is beyond his concern. Every tear has been stored up in his bottle (Psalm 56:8). So far did his commitment to our well-being go, that one day, Yahweh took to himself hands just like ours, stretched them out on a cross, and inscribed our names in his hands with nails.
Looking ahead a few short chapters, Isaiah will prophesy a Suffering Servant who will bear our infirmities, carry our diseases, be wounded for our transgressions, be crushed for our iniquities, be punished that we may be made whole, and be bruised for our healing (Isaiah 53:4–6).
In his epistle to the Galatians (his charter of Christian freedom) the apostle Paul will offer this simple summary: “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us—for it is written, ‘Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree’” (Galatians 3:13, quoting Deuteronomy 21:23). He was cursed for every disobedient and seemingly lost and forgotten son of Abraham and daughter of Sarah, “in order that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, so that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith” (Galatians 3:14).
And all along, it depends on God’s own faithfulness, not ours. To be sure, the call, indeed the obligation, for us is to believe in his provision and strength, rather than our own efforts, our own “works of the law.” That is, after all, what Isaiah was calling for—trusting in the promises of the God who likens himself to a mother who would never abandon her children, no matter what.
I pray you rest secure in that knowledge for yourself.
Be blessed this day,
Reggie Kidd+
Midday Eucharist
Christ Makes All People Worthy - Daily Devotions with the Dean
Wednesday, 1/27/2020
Week of 3 Epiphany
This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 119:49–72; Isaiah 49:1–12; Galatians 2:11–21; Mark 6:13–29
This morning’s Canticles are: following the OT reading, Canticle 11 (“The Third Song of Isaiah,” Isaiah 60:1–3,11a,14c,18–19, BCP, p. 87); following the Epistle reading, Canticle 16 (“The Song of Zechariah,” Luke 1:68–79, BCP, p. 92)
A light to the nations
During the Babylonian exile, Yahweh had exhorted his children to “seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare” (Jeremiah 29:7). Because, in the end, God’s loving purposes include both Israel and the nations. On the far side of her exile, not only will Israel know vindication for all the time of being “deeply despised, abhorred by the nations, the slave of rulers” (Isaiah 49:7). she will be “a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth” (Isaiah 49:6).
Israel wasn’t being rescued from exile just for her own benefit, says Isaiah. Even in announcing the good news of her release from captivity, Isaiah called on her to look beyond herself to the entire Gentile world he had always intended to bless through her.
Crucified with Christ
To the surprise of his Jewish contemporaries, Paul saw his ministry of Christ’s gospel as being a part of Israel’s mission to be that very light to the nations. As he declares to his fellow Jews in the synagogue of Pisidian Antioch: “It was necessary that the word of God should be spoken first to you. Since you reject it and judge yourselves to be unworthy of eternal life, we are now turning to the Gentiles. For so the Lord has commanded us, saying, ‘I have set you to be a light for the Gentiles, so that you may bring salvation to the ends of the earth’” (Acts 13:46–47).
During his first missionary journey (Acts 13–14), Paul witnesses Israel’s Messiah bringing salvation to the nations. Peter too witnesses this amazing new thing that Isaiah had prophesied: he receives an angelic vision on the rooftop of Jason’s house in Joppa and is present at the Spirit’s descending on Gentiles in the centurion Cornelius’s house (Acts 10–11). Peter has seen for himself Israel’s Messiah beginning to bring salvation to the nations.
A profound part of the message of salvation to the nations is that Christ not only makes us clean before him, he makes us clean in one another’s eyes as well. Christ makes all people worthy of God’s, and one another’s, company. As a result, while Peter is visiting the church in Syrian Antioch, he and Paul both experience and enjoy table fellowship among Jewish and Gentile believers in Christ. Christ’s blood on the cross—not any individual’s blood in circumcision—makes a person clean, and furnishes entrance into fellowship with God and his people. Paul gets that. So does Peter.
Except for one thing. Peter steps away from the table of fellowship when some of his Jewish Christian brothers arrive from Jerusalem. Peter never offers a rationale for his behavior. But Paul is furious, because he connects the dots. If Jewish and Gentile believers can’t eat together, it means Christ’s shed blood did not accomplish forgiveness of sins and make us acceptable to God. It means we return to the uncleanness of our sins—all of us!—and to our tribal loyalties. Thus, he rebukes Peter.
And … in his agitation—a holy agitation, I submit—Paul pens a letter to the churches of Galatia. They are entertaining the notion of submitting to the knife of circumcision, thinking the procedure was necessary to make their salvation sure. This letter has served as a charter of freedom to all churches ever since. To shed their own blood would be to say that Christ’s blood—his crucifixion—wasn’t enough. Paul wants them to know that Christ’s blood was absolutely enough. And he wants to lay out its full benefits for them: in Christ, they have everything they need to know forgiveness of sins, and full membership in the household of God.
The keynote verse for the entire letter comes from today’s passage, and it alone is worth time prayerfully pondering its implications (I prefer the New English Translation): “I have been crucified with Christ, and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. So the life I now live in the body, I live because of the faithfulness of the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me” (Galatians 2:20).
Be blessed this day,
Reggie Kidd+
Jesus is Astonished - Daily Devotions with the Dean
Tuesday • 1/26/2021
Week of 3 Epiphany
This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 45; Isaiah 48:12–21; Galatians 1:18–2:10; Mark 6:1–13
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)
There are two equal and opposite ways of getting Jesus wrong. One is so to deify him as to his diminish his humanity (as though “and the Word was God” negated “and the Word became flesh”). The other is so to humanize him as to dismiss his deity (as though “and the Word became flesh” overrode “and the Word was God”).
John’s Gospel (which we were reading during Christmas and Epiphany) pointedly shows the balance: Jesus is the enfleshment of the great I AM. And the touch of God-in-flesh transfigures those whom he touches. Thus, his encounters with the likes of Nicodemus, the woman at the well, the lame man beside the healing pool, the man blind from birth, Lazarus in the grave.
The Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) are more subtle about it, but they stand with John. In today’s gospel passage, Mark (which we are reading during After Epiphany) shows the folly of making Jesus too familiar. Where does such “wisdom” come from in this man who is but “the carpenter” (Mark 6:2,3)? Where does such “power” come from in this mere “son of Mary and brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon, and are not his sisters here with us?” (also Mark 6:2,3). The thought that this mere son of Nazareth may be more than merely a carpenter, a son, and a brother offends people of his hometown (Mark 6:3).
Jesus admonishes them for their over-familiarizing of him: “Prophets are not without honor, except in their hometown, and among their own kin, and in their own house” (Mark 6:4). In different situations, he confirms that he is “more than a carpenter”—as he does when he heals a lame man by forgiving his sins (Mark 2:1–12), or silences the winds and waves (Mark 4:35–41).
But here in Nazareth, he demurs. He, shockingly perhaps, allows his deeds of power to be restricted by people’s lack of faith (Mark 6:5). When Mark says “he could do no deed of power there, except that he laid his hands on a few…,” we should read this saying in a nuanced way. When you’ve come to your limit in a dead-end conversation, you may wisely decide to shut it down with the grace of, “I just can’t do this right now,” rather than search your brain for the perfect (and maybe relationship-ending) put-down, like, “You always were a complete imbecile.”
Jesus is astonished at them. They fail to recognize the gift that stares them in the face merely because his face is too familiar to them. Jesus shows disappointment rather than wrath, restraint rather than resentment. In doing so, he gives room for them to reconsider and reassess. He takes his ministry elsewhere, for now, and even uses the opportunity to begin to share his powers with his disciples. Throughout, Jesus opens a door on the subtlety and the complexity of the duality of his identity both as “Son of God” and “Son of Man.”
One thing that a passage like today’s in Mark demonstrates is that when people think they know Jesus too well, they are liable to get him wrong. There’s a warning here even for people in his church, people like you and me. I pray God’s grace for you and me, that we render him the awe, respect, and circumspection that his wisdom and power demand, that we honor him as more than a carpenter from Nazareth. I pray that God grant us as well the grace to believe that he has come purposely as “carpenter, son, and brother,” to love us for who we are, and to touch us where we hurt, whether we are carpenters or [fill-in-the-blank] or sons or daughters.
Be blessed this day,
Reggie Kidd+
Do Not Fear - Daily Devotions with the Dean
Monday • 1/25/2021
Week of 3 Epiphany
This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 41; Psalm 52; Isaiah 48:1–11; Galatians 1:1–17; Mark 5:21–43
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)
I remember (painfully) a couple of times in my childhood when my mother grabbed my ear and said, “Are you listening to me?!”
Suddenly brought back from whatever had been distracting me, I’d reply, “Now I guess I am!”
“What does it take to get your attention?!”
Isaiah is having one of those moments with Israel. The prophet has been laying out Yahweh’s plan for an exciting new exodus, promising to bring the nation home from their exile in Babylon. Instead of seeing the repentance and renewal of worship that such good news should have called forth, Isaiah is watching the children of Israel carry on their compromised and idolatrous—religion. They presume to call themselves by Yahweh’s name “but not in truth or right,” because they continue to fashion for themselves idols, and put their trust in carved and cast images (Isaiah 48:1b,5b).
Yahweh reminds them of their long history of treachery towards him, and their rebelliousness against this voice (Isaiah 48:8). He accuses them of having necks as unyielding as iron and heads as impenetrable as brass (Isaiah 48:4). Nonetheless, he’s deferring his anger, he says, and he will not destroy them. They are people he’s made for the peculiar honor of praising him. Through their praise, implicitly, they will serve as the vanguard of his renewal of all of creation.
Isaiah reminds Israel that her recent travails (like my mother’s ear-pulling) have been for her refining (Isaiah 48:10). He has not rejected her; he is still committed to her. However, it’s time for her to put away the distractions, to get rid of the fake gods, and to revere the most precious name of the only true God in the universe.
“My glory I will not give to another!!” (Isaiah 48:11). This is Isaiah saying, a bit like my mother, “Are you listening to me?!”
Paul begins a similar conversation with the churches in Galatia (a province in southern or central Asia Minor (current-day Turkey). After an initial enthusiastic response to Paul’s message of the free gift of God in Christ—“who gave himself for our sins to free us from the present evil age” (Galatians 1:4)—these mavericks are thinking about adding a codicil to that message. They want to require and adjoin the shedding of their own blood (via circumcision) to the shedding of Christ’s blood. To Paul, that would be the undoing of the whole relationship. They would be presuming to become their own payers of sin’s debt.
And so, like my mother, Paul writes this first paragraph of his letter to grab their ear and overture an extended brief, “Are you listening to me?! Christ pays it all, or he pays none of it!!” (Stay tuned.)
Mark. The ultimate grace is that grace has come in person, in the person of Jesus Christ. In Mark’s Gospel, Jesus offers healing at the mere touch of the hem of his garment (Mark 5:24b–34), and by the simple taking of a hand and the offering of tender words (Mark 5:21–24a,35–43). All this in response to one single thing: faith.
To the woman who has been hemorrhaging for twelve years, Jesus says, “Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace, and be healed of your disease” (Mark 5:34).
To the man who is on the verge of losing his twelve year old daughter, Jesus says, “Do not fear, only believe” (Mark 5:36).
This season of After Epiphany is one in which we give thanks for the epiphany or manifestation of God’s astoundingly great love in the life and ministry of his Son Jesus Christ. It is not the nature, really, of our Heavenly Father to content himself with yanking on our ears and constantly haranguing us with, “Are you listening to me?!” He sent his Son, that healing may flow from his very being—sometimes healing of the body in this life, always healing of sin’s carnage and eternal condemnation. “Do not fear,” he says, “only believe.”
Collect for the Third Sunday after the Epiphany. Give us grace, O Lord, to answer readily the call of our Savior Jesus Christ and proclaim to all people the Good News of his salvation, that we and the whole world may perceive the glory of his marvelous works; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
Be blessed this day,
Reggie Kidd+
Sunday Worship
Master of Wind and Sea - Daily Devotions with the Dean
Friday • 1/22/2021
Week of 2 Epiphany
This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 31; Isaiah 45:18–25; Ephesians 6:1–9; Mark 4:35–41
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)
Ephesians. All of us inhabit different sorts of over-and-under relationships—at home, at work, at school, in our communities. And though it is difficult to figure out how instructions addressing relationships as different from ours as were those of the 1st century Mediterranean world, there are principles in play that are important for us to heed.
(To keep this devotional short, I am going to skip child-parent relationships.)
In Ephesians 6:5–7, Paul addresses us when we are on the “under” side of work- (or school-, or whatever) relationships. What we owe to our bosses (or whatever) is free, sincere, and heartfelt respect for their position. What we owe to ourselves is a definition of ourselves that comes from Jesus, not from our bosses—“You were bought with a price; do not become slaves of human masters,” says Paul in 1 Corinthians 7:23. Our worth lies in the value that Jesus assigns us—which is enormous!—not in our position or in our bosses’ estimation of us. Once that is settled, we can model the pattern of the One who came “not to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45). We really work for our bosses’ Boss, “doing the will of God from the heart” (Ephesians 6:6).
In Ephesians 6:8–9, Paul addresses us when we are the boss, when we are on the “over” side of a work- (or school-, or whatever) relationship. With Paul’s brilliant “do the same for them,” he gives us our mandate for how to wield the authority of that position—here too, we look to the One who came “not to be served, but to serve, but to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45). Just like the person who answers to us, we ourselves also answer to the very same Person—“for you know that both of you have the same Master in heaven, and with him there is no partiality” (Ephesians 6:9). Our Boss requires us to lead as though we were servants—because that’s what we are.
Meanwhile, Jesus is not asleep in the boat…
Mark. Well, actually, Jesus was asleep in the boat. But his reaction to the disciples when they wake him up indicates that even asleep he had had the situation under control: “Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?” (Mark 4:40).
When the storm rages around us—say, when things really aren’t working out with a horrible boss, or when we find that we are the horrible boss—it can seem like Jesus doesn’t care. It can seem like he’s asleep while the storm is about to sink the boat. Appearances are deceiving.
Which points us back to Isaiah…
Isaiah says two important things in today’s passage:
…he did not create [the earth] a chaos, he formed it to be inhabited! — Isaiah 45:18b. Yahweh created for us a context in which to flourish, not to flounder. After the Fall, all our efforts meet resistance, and every relationship gets colored by our fallenness and the fallenness of the other person. But the Lord did not create his world to be subject to chaos. The Bible’s great story line is this: he has been re-creating his world ever since chaos invaded the Garden. He works for our flourishing, for it is to that end that he formed us. No matter the situation, the Lord is working to bring order out of chaos, freedom out of bondage, sanity out of craziness, and ultimately life out of death.
“To me every knee shall bow, every tongue shall swear” — Isaiah 45:23b. Isaiah makes this declaration in proof that Yahweh is the only true God. He will share that dignity with no other. Extraordinarily, the apostle Paul applies that very saying to Jesus Christ, who, by virtue of humbling himself to incarnation and death, and by virtue of being exalted in resurrection, receives “the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (Philippians 2:6–11).
Isaiah’s and Mark’s words reaffirm what Paul wants us to know: our Savior showed that the way of the cross is the way of life. Wherever we are—“over” or “under,” in smooth waters or stormy—we can trust the Lord Jesus, Master of wind and sea, of chaos and all the powers of heaven and earth.
Be blessed this day,
Reggie Kidd+
Like a Mustard Seed... - Daily Devotions with the Dean
This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 37; Isaiah 45:5–17; Ephesians 5:15–33; Mark 4:21–34
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)
“… truly you are a God who hides himself…” — Isaiah 45:15a.
Isaiah is explaining the nearly unexplainable. Yahweh calls by name a Persian pagan, Cyrus, to be savior and redeemer of his people: “I have roused Cyrus in righteousness, and I will make all his paths straight; he shall build my city and set my exiles free, not for price or reward, says the Lord of hosts” (Isaiah 45:13). Yahweh—besides whom there is no god—forms light and creates darkness, makes weal and creates woe: “I the Lord do all these things” (Isaiah 45:7). On behalf of Yahweh, Isaiah says that the pottery (we) need not demand explanation from or offer advice to the potter (God).
Rightly did hymnist William Cowper write, “God moves in a mysterious way his wonders to perform.” There is a deep hiddenness, a profound inscrutability, to Yahweh, master and maker of heaven and earth, Lord of history and of our lives. Then again…
“This is a great mystery…” — Ephesians 5:32a.
The entire drift of Scripture has been toward a bringing together of God’s life and ours, of his uniting his heart with ours. We have traced the theme of this Divine Romance through Hosea, Ezekiel, the Song of Songs, and the Book of Revelation. And today’s passage in Ephesians presents a crowning moment in that story.
The God “who hides himself” has revealed his face in the person of his Son Jesus. Jesus has done intentionally what Cyrus did unknowingly: Jesus was raised in perfect righteousness; walked the straightest path, that of obedience to his Father. He began to build the City of God in his acts of healing and in his teachings. He set sin’s exiles free by his death, and that at no cost to them. Moreover, he has rounded out Israel’s story of the disgraced prostitute who was to be beautified and made “one flesh” with her Divine Lover, in an eternal embrace of love: “Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, in order to make her holy by cleansing her with the washing of water by the word, so as to present the church to himself in splendor, without a spot or wrinkle or anything of the kind—yes, so that she may be holy and without blemish” (Ephesians 5:25b–27).
In the second half of Ephesians 5, Paul lays out the ways that this “mystery” makes God no longer hidden. The Lord becomes visible in his people’s worship and in their relationships.
Their worship is characterized by wisdom-shaped and Spirit-filled singing of thanks “to the Lord in your hearts” (Ephesians 5:15–20). In that kind of worship, people manifest a vision of the courts of heaven, where praise rings out “day and night” (Revelation 4:8). In their worship, God’s people, in a sense, “unhide” the hidden God.
Their relationships bring to light key aspects of the Divine Romance that Scripture celebrates. Christ has come in loving obedience to his Father’s eternal purpose to redeem. Christ has won his bride by serving her, not by dominating her; by dying for her, not by diminishing her; by ennobling her, not by demeaning her. In what can best be described as a dance, the Bride answers with a “Yes” of finding her life in his, her own glory enhanced in his. In a whirl of ever-evolving mutual deference, they “love, honor, and cherish each other in faithfulness and patience, in wisdom and godliness” (BCP, p. 431). Together, they mirror what ancient Christian theologians called the eternal perichoresis—the everlasting dance—that makes up the inner life of the members of the Trinity.
“It is like a mustard seed…” — Mark 4:31a.
Jesus refers to a plant that was, as New Testament scholar Craig Keener puts it, “proverbially small and yet yielded a large shrub.” To that, Jesus likens the Kingdom of God, which “might begin in obscurity, but it would culminate in glory.” The comfort you and I can take from this image today is this: good worship and right relationships seem like small things. But when the Spirit inhabits the worship and the Son shapes the relationships, our worship and our relationships become powerful demonstrations of, and pointers to, the love of “the Father from whom every family in heaven and earth takes its name” (Ephesians 3:14b–15). William Cowper, again:
Deep in unfathomable mines
Of never failing skill
He treasures up His bright designs
And works His sov’reign will.
Be blessed this day,
Reggie Kidd+