On Plato and Boxing - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Monday • 9/20/2021

We are taking a detour from the Daily Office readings for a few days. Instead, we are 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 from articles I wrote for Worship Leader magazine a few years ago.  We’ll resume our reflections on the Daily Office Monday, September 27.

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On Plato & Boxing: The Art of Living in Two Planes

In the “Heroes” episode of M*A*S*H’s 10th season, the show’s chaplain, Father Mulcahy, sits at the deathbed of one of his life-heroes, a retired boxer named “Gentleman” Joe Cavanaugh. As he comforts the dying boxer, Mulcahy recounts growing up as a scrawny, inner-city kid with big glasses who liked to read Plato. He loved Plato’s description of an “ideal plane,” which helped him imagine a better life: “rambling fields and trees. Sort of like the suburbs, only in the sky.”

One of Mulcahy’s challenges was that he was an easy target for the neighborhood bullies. It didn’t help that he never fought back—thinking fisticuffs were “not very … Platonic.”

Then one night when he was 12 his father took him to see “Gentleman” Joe in a boxing match. “Gentleman” Joe was punching his opponent at will. With the crowd yelling, “Put him away!” Joe had stopped punching and told the ref to stop the fight because the man had been hurt enough. 

And I realized for the first time that it was possible to defend myself and still maintain my principles. If Plato had been a boxer, I suspect he’d have fought like you. That was when I made up my mind to keep one foot in the ideal plane and the other foot in the real world. I thought you might like to know that. And I just wanted to thank you..

Uncommon Match

Francis Mulcahy became an effective priest because he embraced his humanity. Now, the M*A*S*H scriptwriters never really allowed Father Mulcahy to have one foot “in the ideal world.” But they did show the way his keeping one foot “in the real world” lent power to his ministry: from rescuing orphans to performing orderly duties when the rest of the camp was sick, even to performing an emergency tracheotomy while under fire. All the while, he struggled with how useful his life was. Even with the scriptwriters’ muzzle, it always seemed to me, Father Mulcahy’s foot in the real world became a pointer to another plane of existence.    

Recently, a slender, but elegant, art book brought Father Mulcahy to mind. It was Thomas S. Hibbs’ and Makoto Fujimura’s Rouault-Fujimura: Soliloquies. The book comprises three things that, like Mulcahy’s character, remind us of the two planes of existence. 

First, the book catalogs an exhibition of paintings by Georges Rouault (1871-1958) and Fujimura (b. 1960) that appeared together in 2009 in New York City’s Dillon Gallery. 

Second, Baylor University professor Thomas Hibb compares the incarnational techniques and the Godward vision of Rouault and Fujimura. With his bold lines reminiscent of stained glass, Rouault firmly places God’s incarnate Son in this world of fallen Eves, sad clowns, imperious kings, and self-righteous judges. Fujimura has adapted a Japanese medieval technique of refracting light to take up forms and themes of modern abstract art, but with this twist: his refractions of light in abstract form are pointers to the Author of light.

Third, Fujimura offers a personal testimony about how Rouault’s art saved him from existentialism’s “no exit,” and opened to him “a portal that peeks into ages past, and then, magically, invites us into a journey toward our future.” 

This slim (63-page) art book resonated with me because a worship leader is a lot like an artist. Artists and worship leaders both seek to communicate truth in a largely intuitive way. I share with these two artists a vision of God’s transcendent glory, and I realize that in my own way I’m called to “paint” in “the real world.” What Fujimura seeks to do by bringing medieval colors to dance, I seek to do through well selected songs and well crafted prayers: “inviting the City of God into the hearts of the City of Man.”  

Dual Realities

By far, the hardest part of “leading worship” is doing those two things at once. “Leading” means staying in time, maintaining pitch, working at chops. “Worshiping” means leaving time and entering God’s eternal “now,” where “a joyful noise” may or may not be a technically excellent noise. “Leading” calls for paying attention to what’s happening among the worshipers. “Worshiping” calls for paying attention to no one except the worshiped. 

Sometimes I despair of doing both at once. But then hope comes as a heaven-sent gift. Regardless of how odd the form in which hope comes, I receive it. The television character Father Francis John Patrick Mulcahy, was one such gift.

Mulcahy, Rouault, and Fujimura—each in his own way—remind me it’s worth continuing to work at the craft of “leading” worship. It’s important to keep working at scales and charts. It’s important to look for tools that enhance the physicality of the worship experience for the people I serve. But I also need—and desperately so—whatever it takes to keep my worship foot and my leader foot in the right places. 

Be blessed this day,

Reggie Kidd+

Our worship Leader, Part 5 - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Friday • 9/17/2021

We are taking a detour from the Daily Office readings for a few days. Instead, we are 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 from articles I wrote for Worship Leader magazine a few years ago.  We’ll resume our reflections on the Daily Office Monday, September 27.

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“Jesus Christ, Our Worship Leader,” Part Five of Five

This week, we explore the way Jesus exquisitely leads worship in our midst: he prays for us, declares the Father’s name to us, sings over us in love, and brings us bread and wine from God’s holy heavenly altar. 

Bread & Wine

In Christ the King Catholic Church in Mt. Pleasant, SC, there is a beautifully colored stained glass depiction of a man who is obviously from the biblical era. The picture includes a number of clues as to the figure’s identity: he bears a crown on his head and priestly vestments on his shoulders; he stands behind scales of justice and an olive branch of peace. What gives him away, though, is the cup and loaf he holds in his hands. It’s Melchizedek. The stained glass picks up on a detail in Genesis 14’s portrayal of Melchizedek that is easy to pass over, until you’ve really “seen” it. Melchizedek brings to Abram, according to Genesis 14:18, “bread and wine.”

This verse is the first convergence of “bread and wine” in the Bible. Accordingly, ancient commentators and Christian artists through the centuries have found in that detail an irresistible invitation to ponder the Eucharist, the gift of bread and wine the New Testament’s greater Melchizedek provides his brothers and sisters. 

The entire redemptive project envisions, as Robert Stamps’s lovely hymn puts it, “God and man at table are sat down.” As a foretaste of Israel’s ultimate journey, seventy of her elders “eat and drink” in God’s presence on Mt. Sinai (Exod. 24:11). The Bible virtually ends with a wedding feast shared by Christ the Bridegroom and his church, the bride (Rev. 19:5-10). 

In the meantime, as the writer to the Hebrews puts it, “we have an altar from which those who serve the tent have no right to eat” (13:10), but from which we do have the right to eat. Every time Jesus’s people gather he is there, and one of his delights is to set the Table and feed us: “The body of Christ, the bread of heaven. The blood of Christ, the cup of salvation.” 

One of Jesus’s most shocking statements is also one that most vividly portrays the genius of Trinitarian worship. Jesus says that the master who returns to find his servants laboring “will gird himself and have them sit at table, and he will come and serve them” (Luke 12:38). Of course, in one sense, the master has yet to return, and will do so only at the end of time. But in another, he has already returned, having already defeated death and sin and Satan. He is among us to serve us at Table.  

When we receive “bread and wine” from the greater Melchizedek, worship gets transformed. It takes on that mysterious “grammar of grace” to which Torrance referred. Recall that after giving bread and wine and after blessing Abram, Melchizedek received from Abram a tithe (Gen 14:20; Heb. 7:4-10). Accordingly, after indicating we have the right to food from a better altar, the writer to the Hebrews says “through Jesus” we can offer better offerings — not mere tithes, but “a sacrifice of praise to God, that is the fruit of lips that acknowledge his name,” and the doing of good and the sharing of what we have, “for such sacrifices are pleasing to God” (13:15-16).

Our task as worship leaders? Simple, if not easy. Give the platform to the real worship leader. Let him pray effectual prayers. Let him declare the Father’s blessing. Let him sing over his people in love. Let him set the most lavish of tables. 

Be blessed this day, 

Reggie Kidd+

Our Worship Leader, Part 4 - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Thursday • 9/16/2021

We are taking a detour from the Daily Office readings for a few days. Instead, we are 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 from articles I wrote for Worship Leader magazine a few years ago.  We’ll resume our reflections on the Daily Office Monday, September 27.

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“Jesus Christ, Our Worship Leader,” Part Four of Five

This week, we explore the way Jesus exquisitely leads worship in our midst: he prays for us, declares the Father’s name to us, sings over us in love, and brings us bread and wine from God’s holy heavenly altar.

Singing in Our Midst

As our worship leader, Jesus prays and he declares. He also sings. “In the midst of the congregation I will sing a hymn to you,” concludes Heb. 2:12b. The same one who declares God’s name in blessing also leads the congregation in song.  

The writer is actually quoting Psalm 22:22, one in which David is recounting God’s miraculously delivering him from enemies who nearly killed him. The psalm starts out as a lament of abandonment, one of the darkest in all the Bible: “My God, my God, why have your forsaken me?” At the point of rescue, the psalm pivots and becomes a victory chant, celebrating among Jew and Gentile, poor and rich, already dead and not yet born, the righteous rule of God. 

It’s an extraordinary thing that the mightiest warrior of the Bible is also its most celebrated musician. He whose “hands are trained for war and fingers for battle” offers a new song to God: “Upon a harp of ten strings I will sing praises to you” (Ps 144:1,9). In his youth, David soothes Saul’s soul with his melodies. In his maturity, with harp in hand he confesses his sin, protests his innocence, humbles himself under God’s discipline, calls for help, composes “new songs” commemorating God’s fresh acts of deliverance.  

David passes on his legacy of song to members of the Levitical priestly line, to the likes of Chenaniah and Asaph (1 Chron. 15:22; 16:5). It is descendants of these Levites who would oversee Israel’s musical worship (see 2 Chron. 23:18; 35:15), even, at times, going before Israel’s army into battle (2 Chron. 20:14-25). 

But there is only one priestly order that could establish a permanently “new song,” only one director who could incorporate into a single choir people of every race and nation, tribe and tongue, bandwidth and skill-level, only one singer who could lead that menagerie into the fray against the powers and principalities: he who went all the way into the silence of sin-forsakenness and rose in victory to be God-incarnate singing over his people with love (Zeph. 3:17). 

The glory of song in worship is that we get to join our voices to his. His is the voice that counts, not ours.  

Be blessed this day, 

Reggie Kidd+

Our Worship Leader, Part 3 - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Wednesday • 9/15/2021

We are taking a detour from the Daily Office readings for a few days. Instead, we are 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 from articles I wrote for Worship Leader magazine a few years ago.  We’ll resume our reflections on the Daily Office Monday, September 27.

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“Jesus Christ, Our Worship Leader,” Part Three of Five

This week, we explore the way Jesus exquisitely leads worship in our midst: he prays for us, declares the Father’s name to us, sings over us in love, and brings us bread and wine from God’s holy heavenly altar. 

Declaring the Father’s Name

On the one hand, as our worship leader Jesus goes to the Father in our name. On the other, he comes to us in the Father’s name. The complement to what the writer to the Hebrews says about Jesus remembering us to the Father is what he says earlier, in chapter 2. There, the Risen Jesus shouts to his Father: “I will declare your name to my brothers” (v. 12a). 

While Israel’s high priest wore God’s people’s name on his chest, he bore the personal name of the Redeemer God, Yahweh, on his forehead: “Holy is Yahweh” (Exod. 28:36-38). In Numbers 6:26-27, Moses summarizes what the high priest is to do with Yahweh’s name: declare it in blessing. Three times the priest pronounces Yahweh’s name, calling upon him to bless, keep, make his face shine upon, be gracious to, lift up his countenance upon, and give peace to his people.  

But Israel’s Yahweh had never been just hers, and her blessings had never been just for herself. Already back in Genesis 14, the mysterious figure Melchizedek had appeared out of nowhere. He is king of Salem (the city that is eventually to be Jerusalem) and priest of El-Elyon, that is “God Most High” — a pagan designation of the God above all gods. Representing all the nations then, Melchizedek blesses Abram: “Blessed be Abram of El-Elyon, Creator of heaven and earth” (Gen. 14:19). Melchizedek declares that the God who had just given Abram victory over his kin’s captors is not a local, petty tribal deity, but Lord of the whole earth. Melchizedek confirms to Abram Yahweh’s promise that all the nations of the earth will be blessed through Abram (Gen. 12:3; see 14:22). 

Jesus comes to declare God’s name to us in blessing — exactly as he said he was doing in the so-called “High Priestly Prayer” in John 17: “I have made your name known to them, and I will make it known” (v. 26). As “mediator of a new covenant” Jesus shows God to be a Father who desires his children’s presence (Heb. 9:15; 12:24). As “merciful and faithful high priest” and as victor over death and the devil, Jesus proves God to be a Father who will tolerate no bondage for his children (Heb. 2:14-17). As “pioneer and perfecter of our faith” Jesus shows God to be “the Father of spirits” who lovingly shapes his children to bear his character (12:1-11). As “apostle and high priest of our confession” Jesus shows the intent of “the God of all” to fill the cosmos with a “festal gathering” of “the just made perfect” (3:1-2; 12:18-24). 

One of the great preachers of the 19th century was Boston’s Phillips Brooks. In our day, his hymn text “O Little Town of Bethlehem” keeps his memory alive. In his day, he was known for his preaching, as commemorated in a statue just outside the church he served in Boston, Trinity Church. The statue depicts Brooks standing next to a lectern that holds an open Bible, his hand lifted in blessing. Behind the lectern stands Jesus, his arm on Brooks’s shoulder. 

The statue reminds us that our job is to bless God’s people by declaring the Father’s name. When we do, we may, by the Holy Spirit, feel his Son’s kind, empowering hand on our shoulder. When we declare somebody else’s name — our own, our favorite team’s, our preferred political party’s — we may well feel a bit of a squeeze.   

Be blessed this day, 

Reggie Kidd+

Our Worship Leader, Part 2 - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Tuesday • 9/14/2021

We are taking a detour from the Daily Office readings for a few days. Instead, we are 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 from articles I wrote for Worship Leader magazine a few years ago.  We’ll resume our reflections on the Daily Office Monday, September 27.

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“Jesus Christ, Our Worship Leader,” Part Two of Five

This week, we explore the way Jesus exquisitely leads worship in our midst: he prays for us, declares the Father’s name to us, sings over us in love, and brings us bread and wine from God’s holy heavenly altar. 

Prayers for the Rescued

Perhaps the first thing to notice about Jesus’s work as the church’s prime worship leader is what the writer says just before calling Jesus heaven’s Liturgist. “He holds his priesthood permanently, because he continues forever. Consequently, he is able for all time to save those who draw near to God through him, since he always lives to make intercession for them” (Heb. 7:24-25).

On his breastplate Israel’s high priest bore the names of the tribes of Israel, those whom Yahweh had redeemed and called into relationship with himself (Exod. 28:29). What’s different about Jesus’s priestly ministry of prayer is that our names aren’t carved on some sort of accessory. As Isaiah put it so tantalizingly: “I have inscribed you on the palms of my hands” (Isa 49:16). Our names are written into Jesus’s flesh, into the very scars he bears for eternity in his side, his hands, his feet, and his brow. 

The writer to the Hebrews sums Jesus’s life up as one long series of “prayers and supplication, with loud cries and tears, to him who was able to save him out of (note: the Greek is not “from” but “out of”) death, and he was heard for his godly fear” (Heb. 5:7). His life was one long lesson in obedient prayer, even in that dark moment when he implored that perhaps there was another way, “Let this cup pass.” Happily, in the Garden the Father said, “No!” to his Son in order that now in heaven the Father can say, “Yes!” to his Son in our behalf. 

I remember the first time I experienced incense in worship. Immediately, I recalled the word picture in Revelation: the prayers of the saints and the incense mixing and rising into God’s presence (Rev. 8:3-4). The sweetness of the smell brought to mind Christ’s “fragrant offering and sacrifice” that qualifies us to stand righteous and pure before God’s throne (Eph. 5:2). I imagined Christ bringing those incense-laced prayers into the heavenly courts and mingling them there with the Glory Cloud, the depiction of God’s presence in the Old Testament. What a profound picture of our union with God by the Spirit through Christ’s prayer with, for, and in us!

Hours later, I was driving one of my kids to an event on the other side of town, and I kept sensing a certain smell. It was vaguely familiar but maddeningly elusive. Suddenly, I remembered that I had not changed clothes after church. The smell of the incense had penetrated my shirt and pants, clinging to me long after the service was over. Heaven smells of us, because Jesus is there bringing our needs and burdens always before the Father. None of us, I realized, makes it through a moment of this life by virtue of our looks, our brains, our skills, or our likability. We make it because we have a friend in a high place, who “always lives to make intercession.” 

Be blessed this day, 

Reggie Kidd+

Our Worship Leader, Part 1 - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Monday • 9/13/2021

We are taking a detour from the Daily Office readings for a few days. Instead, we are 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 from articles I wrote for Worship Leader magazine a f

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“Jesus Christ, Our Worship Leader,” Part One of Five

The late Scottish theologian James Torrance often recounted his conversation with a man who had lost his faith and was facing his wife’s imminent death to cancer. “I’ve been trying to pray, but I can’t,” lamented the man, broken and ashamed. 

“I can’t tell you ‘how’ to pray, friend. But I can point you to the ‘who’ of prayer,” was the effect of Torrance’s reply. Torrance reminded the man that Jesus promised Peter he would pray for him even through Peter’s denial (Luke 22:31). In fact, Jesus returned from the dead to restore their relationship (John 21:15-24). Paul the apostle, Torrance explained, acknowledged that we don’t know how to pray, which is precisely why the Father set his risen Son at his own right hand to intercede for us, and placed his Holy Spirit within us to do the same (Rom. 8:26,34). Jesus, even now, said Torrance, “is praying for you … and with you and in you.” 

Soon after that conversation, Torrance had the opportunity to introduce both the man and his wife to what he calls the Trinity’s “grammar of grace”: Our “Father … has given us Christ and the Spirit to draw us to himself in prayer.” At the heart of that grammar is the priesthood of Jesus Christ: “our great high priest, touched with a feeling of our infirmities, interceding (to the Father) for us, opening our hearts by the Spirit.” 

As with prayer, so with worship: the “how” is not as important as the “who.” Torrance challenged a generation of theology students to repent of “Unitarian” worship and embrace “Trinitarian” worship. According to Torrance, you know your worship is Unitarian (even if you label it Christian) if your worship is about various techniques of experiencing God on your own. You know your worship is Trinitarian if your worship is about Jesus, your elder brother and great high priest, drawing you into the eternal communion of love that has always characterized God’s own life as Loving Father, Beloved Son, and Holy Spirit, who is love itself. 

I’ve led worship long enough to know the lure of technique-obsessed, Unitarian worship. I’ve seen it practiced over and over again. Along the way, I have learned to look for a different way, and to know the surprise and delight of the Trinity’s “grammar of grace,” where Jesus is our true worship leader. 

A New Kind of Priest

We are not the first generation to have to figure out how to move from Unitarian to Trinitarian worship. The anonymous writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews helped a first-century Jewish congregation see how monumental the shift is from an old way of worship to a new, where the Son is worthy of worship alongside the Father (Heb. 1:3,8,10-12; 13:8), as is the Holy Spirit (Heb. 6:4; 10:29). 

Of particular concern to the writer to the Hebrews, though, is the special nature of Jesus’s role as priest in representing us to the Father and the Father to us. Jesus is the unique God-Man priest “in the order of Melchizedek,” whose priesthood is eternal and whose once-for-all self-offering brought a redemption and forgiveness that is complete and needs no augmentation. Jesus is a priest whose work is done, in one sense. He sits at the right hand of the Father because he does not have to make any further offerings. By his sacrifice, Jesus has assured God’s satisfaction in us, and has cleansed our consciences. We don’t have to worry about guilt or death any longer. 

But in another sense, Jesus’s priesthood goes into overdrive when his sacrificial work is completed. Now he serves as “Liturgist (Gk: leitourgos) in the sanctuary and the true tent which is set up not by man but by the Lord” (Heb. 8:2). 

Throughout his brilliant letter, the writer carefully unpacks different elements of Jesus’s ongoing liturgical leadership. They couldn’t be more relevant to what we do when we worship. 

Through the rest of this week, we explore the way Jesus exquisitely leads worship in our midst: he prays for us, declares the Father’s name to us, sings over us in love, and brings us bread and wine from God’s holy heavenly altar.

Be blessed this day,

Reggie Kidd+ 

Being Right vs. Being Made Right - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Friday • 9/10/2021
Friday of the Fifteenth Week After Pentecost (Proper 18)

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 40; Psalm 54; 1 Kings 18:20–40; Philippians 3:1–16; Matthew 3:1–12

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)

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Being right vs. being made right. Somewhere along the way when I was growing up, I picked up the notion that I always had to be right. I had to know the answers, and I had to be 100% right about them. I lost a spelling bee in the fifth grade, and to this day, every occasion for using that word is an occasion to relive that crushing moment. If I got a 98% on a quiz, I would argue with my teacher for that additional 2%. 

For other people, the issues may be different: being the prettiest, being the star jock, being the “baddest,” or coming off as the wealthiest. It is all so exhausting. No wonder so many just give up. 

I gave up, too, because just at the point of exhaustion Paul’s words from today’s passage met me: “…that I may be found in him, not having my own righteousness…” (Philippians 3:9). Just when it began to occur to me that I would never know enough to justify my existence by always being right, along came Paul with a better claim than mine (“as to righteousness under the law, blameless”—Philippians 3:6). He said it was all garbage (actually his term skubala means excrement). Skubala compared to “the supreme good of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord” (Philippians 3:8). And that, finally, was good enough for me, too. 

It was freeing to realize I didn’t have to justify my existence by being right all the time — which, ironically, gave me the freedom to pursue knowledge better. I had to trust the one who is right and who makes right: “…not having my own righteousness that comes from the law, but one that comes through faith (literally) of Christ…” (Philippians 3:9). 

This phrase “faith of Christ” for Paul is multivalent—it is deep and fraught with meaning. 

In the first place, Paul means that Christ exercised faith towards God, and faithfully represented God on this earth. He knew his heavenly Father, and he was thus the first human to get God right. He believed his mission—set in eternity—was, in the thought-frame of Isaiah 53, death unto life. It was, on the one hand, to pour himself out to death, to bear the sin of many, to make intercession for transgressors, and therefore, on the other hand, to make many righteous, to find satisfaction in his knowledge, to see his offspring, to prolong his days, to be allotted a portion with the great, and to divide the spoil with the strong (Isaiah 53:8–12). Here on the earth as a man, Jesus trusted God to the point of allowing himself to die a criminal’s death for a world of criminals. He knew his Father’s promise to vindicate him by raising him up, and through him, to grant resurrection life to all who took refuge in him. 

Which takes us to the other side of “faith”: our faith in him. Our trusting that his death is ours. His death pays for our sins,  sets a pattern for our giving up our own interests for the sake of others, and calls us to share in his sufferings. Faith is also our trusting that his resurrection likewise means our resurrection. It brings the birth of “the new man” within us, means the onboard presence of the living Christ in our lives, and promises that at the renewal of all things our very bodies will be made new like his. 

The bonus is that those who are “found in him” and who let go of everything else as so much skubala often find him giving much of it back. In him, those things are no longer worthless filth, but gifts that have been reclaimed, refurbished, redeemed, and ready to be used to his glory and for the welfare of others: whether smarts or looks or athletic prowess or moxie or resources. “For,” as Paul says elsewhere, “all things are yours, … the world or life or death or the present or the future—all belong to you, and you belong to Christ, and Christ belongs to God” (1 Corinthians 1:21b,22b,23). 

Be blessed this day, 

Reggie Kidd+

God is in Control - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Thursday • 9/9/2021
Thursday of the Fourteenth Week After Pentecost (Proper 18)

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 50; 1 Kings 18:1–19; Philippians 2:12–30; Matthew 2:13–23

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)

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God Is in Control 

In my view, one of the most striking vistas in all Israel is to be found at the summit of the Herodium, a hill in the Judean desert three miles southeast of Bethlehem. According to first century Jewish historian Josephus, King Herod the Great commanded his engineers to make the Herodium artificially taller and “rounded off in the shape of a breast” (Josephus, Jewish War 1.419). It is most famous as Herod’s likely burial site. When you stand at the top and look northwest, you discover you are looking right down on Bethlehem, the place of Jesus’s birth and of the slaying of the innocents.

Shortly before his own death from a consuming internal disease, and frantically trying to keep his hold on this life and his rule, King Herod had ordered the slaughter of all the babies in Bethlehem (Matthew 2:1–12). In addition to trying to kill the unknown newborn infant he saw as a rival, Herod had ordered the rounding up of Jewish leaders. He had commanded that they be killed upon his death, to ensure that there would be mourning throughout Israel at his passing. Fortunately, his orders were reversed when he did in fact die, leading to much relief and celebration (Josephus, Antiquities 17.6.174–175; 8.1.193). 

It’s not difficult to imagine Herod’s funeral procession bringing his bier right past Bethlehem on its way to its burial place from Herod’s palace in Jericho a few miles away. Right past Bethlehem. Within earshot of mothers still bewailing the massacre of their babies. Mourning in Israel indeed, not as part of Herod’s maniacal narcissism, but  prophesied as part of God’s redemptive design: 

“A voice was heard in Ramah,
    wailing and loud lamentation,
Rachel weeping for her children;
    she refused to be consoled, because they are no more.” (Matthew 2:18). 

The reality is that God’s inexorable plan of redemption rolls on. Pharaoh had failed to snuff out the life of baby Moses, who rose to bring God’s people out of Egyptian slavery. Herod failed to snuff out the life of baby Jesus, because his parents whisked him away to Egypt. And as one like, but greater than, Moses, Jesus will return to “fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet, ‘Out of Egypt I have called my son’” (Matthew 2:15; Hosea 11:1). 

It’s good to keep in mind that God is always working behind the scenes in the most disastrous of circumstances, and that in the long run his goodness will prevail. 

Elijah’s time in exile and the miraculous way he sees God take care of the widow of Zarephath prepares him for his confrontation with the evil king Ahab and the priests of Baal. Obadiah, though a lover of Yahweh, finds himself in charge of the court of militantly pagan Ahab. Elijah calls upon him to risk “outing” himself by announcing Elijah’s coming.  

From prison, Paul has to learn to trust that the Lord will use the power of his words and his prayers to help believers do the dance between their responsibility to “work out your salvation” and to trust “God who is at work within you” (Philippians 2:12–13). He has to trust that people will see, in his emissaries Timothy and Epaphroditus, Christlike examples of what it is to “hold fast to the word of life” and to “shine like stars in the world,” even “in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation” (Philippians 2:15). 

The challenge is ever before us. We may face monstrous egos like Herod or Ahab, with the misery they create for everybody around them. We may cope with difficult providences like Paul, which would seem to limit any influence we could have for good. Or we may even be called like Obadiah to do what seems crazy: literally or metaphorically suicidal. Nonetheless, we can trust—truly trust—that, as Twila Paris sings, “God is in Control”:

This is no time for fear
This is a time for faith and determination
Don’t lose the vision here
Carried away by emotion
Hold on to all that you hide in your heart
There is one thing that has always been true
It holds the world together

God is in control
We believe that His children will not be forsaken
God is in control
We will choose to remember and never be shaken
There is no power above or beside Him, we know
God is in control, oh God is in control

History marches on
There is a bottom line drawn across the ages
Culture can make its plan
Oh, but the line never changes
No matter how the deception may fly
There is one thing that has always been true
It will be true forever

He has never let you down
Why start to worry now?
He is still the Lord of all we see
And He is still the loving Father
Watching over you and me
Watching over you, watching over me,
Watching over…
Every little sparrow, every little thing,
Oh, God is in control!

Be blessed this day, 

Reggie Kidd+

Image: Adaptation from Nagendra Rai (Indian Institute of Toxicology Research), CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The Grand Undoing - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Wednesday • 9/8/2021
Wednesday of the Fifteenth Week After Pentecost (Proper 18)

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 119:49–72; 1 Kings 17:1–24; Philippians 2:1–11; Matthew 2:1–12

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)

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Many, if not most, scholars of Paul’s letters believe that Philippians 2:6–11 is an early Christian hymn, whether Paul is quoting it from a song already in use in the church or composing it himself. In most modern Bibles, these verses are laid out in poetic form. 

From Philippians on, Paul’s writings show more and more traces of hymnic features. His articulation of Christ’s majesty becomes more evident in these later letters: Philippians, Colossians, and Ephesians, but I’d also add at least 1 Timothy and Titus to letters that develop more of Paul’s “high Christology.”  

It’s as though the longer Paul contemplates the goodness of the good news of redemption from sin, the more captivated he becomes by the wonder of what has been done for us—and by Whom it has been done. Praise rises reflexively.

The vista that opens before us in Philippians 2 is breathtaking. In the Garden of Eden, though bearing God’s breath within them and though given the godlike task of overseeing and nurturing life on the earth, Adam and Eve did not consider it enough. They grasped after a knowledge that was on par with God’s own. 

Add to that Herod the Great from today’s reading in Matthew. Herod is a perfect embodiment of the same self-idolatrous striving. We know from historians outside the Bible that Herod dies of a wasting and consuming internal disease not long after Jesus’s birth. When the magi from the East inform him they have come to hail a new king, Herod pushes against the inevitability of his being dethroned, not just by another king, but by death itself. 

In one elegant turn of phrase in Philippians 2, Paul describes how Jesus Christ counters the idolatrous drive that took root in Adam and Eve and that has manifested itself in all the Herods—in fact, in all of us—ever since: 

… though he was in the form of God, … (Philippians 6a). In fact, Paul had come to recognize that he had to make room in his confession of the oneness of God (“Hear, O Israel, the Lord your God is one”—Deuteronomy 6:4) for the full divinity of God’s Son (Romans 9:5; 1 Corinthians 8:6; Colossians 1:15–17;2:2–3; Titus 2:13).

… did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself  … (Philippians 2:6–7a). The divine Second Person of the Trinity lowered himself to take on our estate that he might raise us up from the brokenness and decay to which our foolishness, our pride, and our self-exaltation had lowered us. 

What is especially lovely about Paul’s articulation of this profound truth is that he puts it out there for us in order to inculcate among us that same mindset and attitude: “Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus.” To that end, he introduces his hymn to Christ by exhorting: oneness of mine, mutual love, fullness of accord, abandonment of selfish ambition or conceit: “in humility regard others as better than yourselves. Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others” (Philippians 2:2–6). Be to each other as Christ is to each of us. 

To step into the richness of today’s verses from Paul is to yield ourselves to singing praise vibrantly and to living love boldly. It is to lift hands in worship and extend arms in service. It is to bend our minds and hearts towards one another, looking to find agreement rather than disagreement. It is to serve, rather than to be served. It is to take our place in the grand undoing—the reversal of depravity, decay, death, and destruction—that Christ came to accomplish here on earth. It is to embrace life itself by embracing Life himself. 

Be blessed this day, 

Reggie Kidd+

Image: Adapted from "Ctrl + Z" by michalska1 is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0

A Win-Win for Paul - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Tuesday • 9/7/2021
Tuesday of the Fifteenth Week After Pentecost (Proper 18)

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 45; 1 Kings 16:23–34; Philippians 1:12–30; Mark 16:1–8

For further thoughts on Mark 16:1–8, see the DDD for 4/13/2020, Monday of Easter Week, Year 2: https://tinyurl.com/ddwhntnf

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)

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Mark’s challenging ending. Whether by the providence of a longer ending having been been lost (as some theorize) or by Mark’s own design, the best ending of Mark’s gospel is Mark 16:1–8. It’s an odd ending, because it records the witnesses to the empty tomb leaving it in fear: “They went out and fled from the tomb, for trembling and astonishment had gripped them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid” (Mark 16:8). 

Either way, we readers know exactly what those first witness knew: a) Jesus is God’s Son (Mark 1:1, etc.); b) he has given his life as a ransom for our sin (Mark 10:45); c) we have been told he has risen from the dead and has told us to “meet him in Galilee” (Mark 16:6–7); and d) he has told us our life is now to consist of both suffering for and testifying to God’s kingdom (Mark 13:10,19,24). 

The question the empty grave poses for Mark’s original readers (and for us) is whether we will answer its call to meet the Risen Christ in our own Galilee. Even if we are “seized” by the same “terror and amazement” that struck the first witnesses to the empty tomb, we, just as they, can expect Jesus to offer us our share in his cross and in the venture of taking his message to the world. 

Paul on living and dying. Imprisoned in Rome for testifying to Jesus, Paul provides a profound perspective on sharing Christ’s cross while taking his message to the world. Paul’s attitude is wondrous. He knows that his presence in a Roman prison has become a great conversation starter all over the city. Some Christians, out of love for him, share the good news of Christ eagerly. Other Christians, out of spite for him, do the same thing—but hoping to make his situation worse. Paul only cares that people are hearing about Christ, whether it improves his prospects of liberation from jail, or not. One of his more memorable or axiomatic statements is this: “For me, to live is Christ and to die is gain” (Philippians 1:21 NASB).  

Here’s the gist of Paul’s saying: “I’m OK in either case, no matter how this turns out. If my Christian friends are successful in making Christ more attractive in Caesar’s courts, and if that leads to my release, then I will have more opportunity to live for Christ and tell others about him. If my (Christian!) enemies successfully irritate people by talking about Christ so much that it leads to my martyrdom, that’s all the better. It’s gain for me, because it means I enter the nearer presence of the Lord. It’s a win-win for me.” 

I can only hope for half this confidence, half this equilibrium for myself, but I am so grateful these words are here in Scripture to stimulate, stir up, and inspire. We have been given the privilege of knowing the Lord and suffering for him: “For to you it has been granted for Christ’s sake, not only to believe in Him, but also to suffer for His sake” (Philippians 1:29). We stand in a long line of those who have counted themselves blessed with this dual honor: to know Christ and to suffer for and with him (see Philippians 3:10). 

1 Kings on appearance and reality. What a contrast with King Omri, and the line that he establishes in Israel. In terms of secular history and to all outward appearances, Omri’s brief twelve year reign is successful. His rise ends a half century of civil war in the northern kingdom. He establishes a stunningly beautiful new capital, he makes alliances with surrounding kingdoms that bring regional stability, and he establishes a royal line that oversees prosperity and relative peace. But it is corrupt to the core, at least by biblical standards. Jezebel, the wife he secures for his son and successor Ahab, is a zealous and evangelizing devotee of Baal and Asherah. She will lead Israel further into idolatry. And the Bible’s verdict on Ahab’s twenty-two year reign is that he “did evil in the sight of the Lord more than all who were before him” (1 Kings 16:30). This verdict comes, despite Ahab’s reign being, according to archaeological evidence, the most prosperous and powerful years of Israel’s existence as a kingdom separate from Judah. 

Scripture’s perspective is utterly amazing and radically challenging: Omri and Ahab, who thrive on their thrones, Scripture deems failures, while Paul, who writes from prison, Scripture considers a success. Indeed, if the tomb is empty because Christ is risen, as Mark knows it is, then everything is upside down: by dying we live, to bring news of true life to those whose existence is but a walking death. 

Be blessed this day, 

Reggie Kidd+

Image: Adapted from photo byAudreyYu. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. https://audrey-shark.blogspot.com/2014/05/trip-to-rome-encounter-with-st-paul.htm  This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License

An Examplar of Grace - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Monday • 9/6/2021
Monday of the Fifteenth Week After Pentecost (Proper 18) 

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 41; Psalm 52; 1 Kings 13:1–10; Philippians 1:1–11; Mark 15:40–47

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)

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Philippians: grace wins. Over the course of this week, we will read most of the apostle Paul’s epistle to the Philippians. With Paul’s ministry, and with the New Testament as a whole, life and history have turned a corner. In grace, God has come himself in the person of his Son to give his own life, so that all our idolatrous altars may be torn down, and so that the ashes of our old selves who worshiped at these altars may be burned. 

A powerful exemplar of this grace is the apostle Paul, namesake of that King Saul who had been displaced by David and David’s line (Saul/Paul in fact descends from King Saul’s tribe—see Philippians 3:5). By the blood of the cross and because of the risen Christ’s appearing to him, Paul finds himself an emissary of the good news of God’s plan to heal the breach between God and us and the divisions among ourselves. 

While he awaits his first trial in Rome, Paul writes a letter of thanks to the Philippians, one of his churches back in northern Greece. It is here, in Philippi, that the gospel had first been planted on European soil during the second missionary journey (Acts 16). With this group of believers Paul has enjoyed an especially warm relationship, and he wants them to know of his gratitude for that relationship and for their ongoing financial support of his ministry. 

“From the first day to now” they have been partners (koinōnoi) with Paul in gospel ministry. In the fellowship of this ministry, everybody is a “saint” (Philippians 1:1), no matter their place or story of origin. A person may be a Jew, whether of Saul/Paul’s tribe or another. Or they may be a Gentile of any demographic (perhaps a female merchant of purple finery, or a slave girl delivered of a divining spirit, or a jailer baptized at Paul’s miraculous release—see Acts 16:14–34). Regardless, they are all “saints,” that is, people made holy in God’s sight. 

Among them there are no rival kings. There is no spirit of Jeroboam-like idolatry or Rehoboam-like cruelty. Instead, they are fellow citizens of “the heavenly commonwealth” (to politeuma en ouranois, Philippians 3:21), who are learning, through the servant-leadership of “bishops and deacons,” how to “do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility [to] regard others as better than [them]selves” (Philippians 1:1; 2:3). 

Collect for Proper 18. Grant us, O Lord, to trust in you with all our hearts; for, as you always resist the proud who confide in their own strength, so you never forsake those who make their boast of your mercy; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

Be blessed this day, 

Reggie Kidd+

Image: Adapted from © José Luiz Bernardes Ribeiro / CC BY-SA 4.0