God Supplies What is Needed - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Monday • 4/4/2022
Monday of 5 Lent, Year Two 

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 31; Exodus 4:10-31; 1 Corinthians 14:1-19; Mark 9:30-41

For a DDD “Riffing on Paul’s approach to tongue-speaking” in 1 Corinthians 14:12 from 10/12/2021 

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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The Book of Exodus is about many things, one of which is the long journey of Moses to be described finally as a “friend of God” (Exodus 33:1). Along the way, Moses has some lessons to learn. And his journey is an invitation for us to contemplate just what it is to be called “friend of God” and to know the Lord “face to face” (Exodus 33:11; Deuteronomy 34:10) … and what it takes to get there.   

Candor about your inadequacies. We don’t know what made Moses protest his lack of eloquence and his “slowness of speech and tongue” (Exodus 4:10). He may have had a speech impediment. He may have felt his current forty years of wilderness life had eroded rhetorical skills he had learned his first forty years in Pharaoh’s courts. The point is, he acknowledges his inadequacy, and Yahweh accommodates. 

Who can’t identify with Moses? Who feels completely up to every task to which they are called — a new job, the Spirit’s nudge to tell a friend about Jesus, a sense you might be called to minister in an uncomfortable setting? Who hasn’t sensed God’s displeasure at our refusal in the face of his promptings?

God supplies Moses with Aaron. Who hasn’t been grateful when the Lord has provided a Christian friend to provide wise counsel, just the right verse to get us back on track, or the right person to come alongside us to help with the task at hand? Praise be to the God of grace who meets us where we are … and is not content to leave us there!

Faithfulness to the basics. Moses had embarked upon the special task to which God had called him, but he had overlooked one of the fundamental requirements of covenantal relationship. He had failed to initiate his sons into the covenant community through circumcision. 

Exactly what transpires during the night our reading describes as “the Lord met him and tried to kill him” is mysterious (Exodus 4:24). If ever there was ever a case of hyperbole in the Bible, it is here. If the God who sends the plagues against Egypt wanted to kill Moses, Moses would be dead. I suspect that the narrative depends upon Moses’s own account of a night-time terror that came upon him. Maybe it was a nightmare, maybe a nighttime visitation by the Angel of the Lord. We don’t know. Whatever it was, it felt to Moses like the Lord was trying to kill him. His wife, Zipporah knows exactly what to do (in the story, she’s the equivalent of Tami Taylor in the Friday Night Lights TV series, who always seems to know what to do!). Snip. Snip. Their child is brought into line with covenant life through circumcision … and so is the heretofore disobedient father. That’s why we sing, “Trust and obey, for there’s no other way…” 

Extraordinary gifts and calling do not remove the need for attention to the basics of obedience and character. The field is littered with celebrity pastors who have “fallen” because nobody called them to account for sins of pride, envy, greed, sexual license. Historically, the apparent “Christianizing” of the Roman Empire took place under the leadership of an unbaptized, and therefore undiscipled, Constantine.* The church has paid a high price: the toleration of a pick-and-choose attitude among professed believers toward fundamental things like what to believe, how to behave, and whether or not to belong to a church. Lent is a good time for all of us to ask ourselves straightforward questions about how we are doing with matters of basic discipleship: Bible study and prayer, faithfulness in worship and giving, loving our neighbor as ourselves and respecting the dignity of every human being. Again, “Trust and obey, for there’s no other way….”

Be blessed this day, 

Reggie Kidd+

Image: Pixabay

* See the analysis in Alan Kreider, The Change of Conversion and the Origin of Christendom (Trinity Press International, 1999; Wipf and Stock, 2006), especially Chapter 4, “Constantine Broadens the Attraction,” pp. 33–42. 

How to Face Desperate Times - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Friday • 4/1/2022
Friday of 4 Epiphany, Year Two 

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 102; Exodus 2:1–22; 1 Corinthians 12:27–13:3; Mark 9:2–13

And Saturday’s Exodus 2:23–3:15

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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Psalm 102: Calling out in distress. This morning’s psalm hits like a ton of bricks: “…[M]y days drift away like smoke, and my bones are hot as burning coals” (Psalm 102:3). I am struck both by how close to home the psalmist’s situation is: our lives are as precarious as his. I am struck also by the fact that the psalmist’s spiritual instinct is to process the pain by writing a song to the Lord. The psalm’s superscription (not in the BCP, but part of the ancient received text, and included in printed editions of the Bible) says it all: “A prayer of one afflicted, when faint and pleading before the Lord.”  

Psalm 102 is a masterful study in how to face desperate times. 

First, the psalmist cries out to the Lord about how distressing his situation is (vv. 1-11): “I lie awake; I am like a lonely bird on the housetop … I wither away like grass” (vv. 7,11 NRSV). 

Second, the psalmist expresses confidence that the Lord will “regard the prayer of the destitute, and will not despise their prayer.” The Lord will heal, and thereby bring glory and praise to himself (vv. 12-22): 

18 Let this be recorded for a generation to come,
    so that a people yet unborn may praise the Lord:
19 that he looked down from his holy height,
    from heaven the Lord looked at the earth,
20 to hear the groans of the prisoners,
    to set free those who were doomed to die;
21 so that the name of the Lord may be declared in Zion,
    and his praise in Jerusalem,
22 when peoples gather together,
    and kingdoms, to worship the Lord.

Third, the psalmist turns again to his own plight, contrasting his own fragility with the Lord’s eternality (vv. 23-28): “[D]o not take me away at the midpoint of my life, you whose years endure throughout all generations” (v. 24 NRSV). But then that last clause prompts an extraordinary turn. In the remaining verses of his song, the psalmist drops an “Easter Egg” of sorts. He celebrates God’s permanence in language that the New Testament will pick up centuries later to describe Jesus Christ, the Eternal Son whom God sends as Apostle and High Priest of his love: “[Y]ou are the same, and your years have no end” (compare Psalm 102:25-27 with Hebrews 1:10-12).

Exodus 2 and 3: Yahweh prepares a redeemer. In Exodus 2 and 3 (today’s and Saturday’s readings), the future deliverer Moses is rescued from a murderous tyrant’s decree of death-by-drowning as an infant. As an adult, Moses is moved at seeing the “forced labor” inflicted on “his people.” After a horribly misguided and tragically failed attempt to avenge the beating of one of his kinfolk, Moses goes into a wilderness exile. 

In that exile Moses has a personal encounter with Yahweh. From the burning bush, Yahweh says, “I have observed the misery … I have heard their cry … I know their sufferings … The cry of the Israelites has now come to me.” This tender insight comes in the same passage as the revelation about God’s mysterious name: “I AM WHO I AM.” The Redeemer Lord of the Exodus is touched by our infirmities, but he’s no fuddy-duddy “Big Guy” in the sky. More fundamentally, the Redeemer Lord will graciously bring about his redemption through the rescued wanna-be redeemer Moses. But Moses must learn to do the Lord’s work in the Lord’s way. 

Centuries later, infant Jesus also escapes a tyrant’s decree (Matthew 2). Jesus too will be moved by the plight of the oppressed, but instead of inflicting punishment on evildoers, Jesus will undergo a vicarious death-by-drowning at his baptism (Matthew 3). Having readied himself to take the punishment for our sin, Jesus then exiles himself to the wilderness (Matthew 4). There is no burning bush for him, only the voice of the tempter. Nor is there a need to be taught to do the Lord’s work the Lord’s way, for Jesus is the Lord himself. And he assures the Tempter that he has come to do the will of His Father and ours. Moses’s life and ministry foreshadows in remarkable ways that the Lord’s work will indeed be done in the Lord’s way!  

All the world’s pain—from the psalmist’s to the Israelites’ to yours and mine, be it pestilence or war, fractured relationships or failing health—all of it has been taken up into the suffering and victory of God’s Eternal Son, our Lord Jesus Christ. 

Be blessed. May the knowledge of that hope sustain you this day. 

Reggie Kidd+

Image: Adaptation, Pixabay

Words to Lift Up to Yahweh - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Thursday • 3/31/2022
Thursday of 4 Epiphany, Year Two

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 69; Exodus 1:6–22; 1 Corinthians 12:12–26; Mark 8:27–9:1

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

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Exodus and Psalm 69: Rescue is on the way. The start of the book of Exodus is worth noting: Exodus begins the saga of a return home. Separation from the Garden had led to the slavery of sin. Thus, Israel’s exile under “taskmasters” in Egypt is a parable for the whole human condition of captivity under the dominion of sin, evil, and death. God is not going to leave his people under this oppression. As Eucharistic Prayer A puts it: “…and when we had fallen into sin and become subject to evil and death, you in your mercy sent Jesus Christ…to reconcile us to you….” The book of Exodus, we’ll see, is a telling of that story in advance. 

Today’s canticle, “The Song of Moses,” celebrates the fact that taskmasters do not have the final say, that “Yahweh is a warrior; Yahweh is his name” (Exodus 15:3 JB). As the story of the exodus unfolds, we see that God’s deliverance for all of us can be likened to a rescue from drowning waters. Despite Pharaoh’s command that “every boy that is born to the Hebrews you shall throw into the Nile,” baby Moses will be lifted from the waters. Despite being trapped on the shores of the Red Sea, the nation of Israel will be brought through the parted waters on dry ground. 

Today’s psalm, Psalm 69, personalizes Moses’s and Israel’s experience. In this song about one of his own near-death experiences, David gives each of us words to lift up to Yahweh when life circumstances feel like they are about to sweep over us and drown us: “Let not the torrent of waters wash over me, neither let the deep swallow me up; do not let the Pit shut its mouth upon me” (Psalm 69:17). 

But more: David provides one of his many glimpses of the Savior he looked forward to: “They gave me gall to eat, and when I was thirsty, they gave me vinegar to drink. As for me, I am afflicted and in pain; your help, O God, will lift me up on high” (Psalm 69:23–24; see Matthew 27:34; Mark 15:23). David saw in advance that which we have the privilege of seeing at Calvary and in our lives: Christ meets us in the torrent, suffers in our stead, and rescues us from the “reproach” of our enemies, and from the “shame” and “dishonor” of our sin (Psalm 69:21a). 

1 Corinthians: “If one member suffers…” One verse stands out in today’s reading from 1 Corinthians: “If one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honored, all rejoice together with it” (12:26). Throughout this passage, the apostle Paul contemplates the “oneness” and the “many-ness” of Christ’s Body the church. All baptized into one body, all drinking from the same Spirit. Everybody feeling everybody’s joy. Everybody feeling everybody’s pain. 

The English poet and priest, John Donne (1573–1631) had an acute feel for the truth of the interconnectedness of our lives.  

“No man is an island, 
Entire of itself, 
Every man is a piece of the continent, 
A part of the main. 
If a clod be washed away by the sea, 
Europe is the less, 
As well as if a promontory were. 
As well as if a manor of thy friend’s 
Or of thine own were: 
Any man’s death diminishes me, 
Because I am involved in mankind, 
And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; 
It tolls for thee.”

“All mankind is one volume. When one man dies, one chapter is torn out of the book and translated into a better language. And every chapter must be so translated. God employs several translators. Some pieces are translated by age, some by sickness, some by war, some by justice. But God’s hand shall bind up all our scattered leaves again for that library where every book shall lie open to another.”

The Suffrages in the Daily Office are pitch perfect to enable us as a “kingdom of priests” to bring the hopes and hurts and the aspirations and torments of the whole human family to the throne of grace. I commend a lingering over each couplet:

Show us your mercy, O Lord;

And grant us your salvation.

Clothe your ministers with righteousness;

Let your people sing with joy.

Give peace, O Lord, in all the world;

For only in you can we live in safety.

Lord, keep this nation under your care;

And guide us in the way of justice and truth.

Let your way be known upon earth;

Your saving health among all nations.

Let not the needy, O Lord, be forgotten;

Nor the hope of the poor be taken away.

Create in us clean hearts, O God;

And sustain us with your Holy Spirit. Amen

Be blessed this day, 

Reggie Kidd+

Image: Pixabay

A Necessarily Long Walk - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Wednesday • 3/30/2022
Wednesday of 4 Lent, Year Two

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 101; Psalm 109; Genesis 50:15–26; 1 Corinthians 12:1–11; Mark 8:11–26

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

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Genesis: “Am I in the place of God?” Joseph’s next-to-last words to his brothers in this last chapter of the Bible’s “Book of Beginnings” are powerful and moving: “Do not be afraid! Am I in the place of God? Even though you intended to do harm to me, God intended it for good, in order to preserve a numerous people, as he is doing today. So have no fear; I myself will provide for you and your little ones” (Genesis 50:19b–20). Joseph’s words offer us rich and necessary life principles. Let God do all the righting of wrongs done to us. Trust that all our days are in God’s good hands, and that therefore any spite or malice or ill-will that comes against us will finally serve His good designs for us. Finally, therefore, give up the need to even things out ourselves; instead seek to repay evil with forgiveness and even with affection. 

As worthy of emulation as Joseph is in all these respects, it will take One who is greater than Joseph to offer himself on a gibbet to right all wrongs, secure payment of all debts, satisfy all grievances, and, in the words of the Great Vigil’s Exsultet: cast out pride and hatred, bring peace and concord, join heaven and earth, and reconcile God and humankind (BCP, p. 287). 

Prayer for Quiet Confidence. O God of peace, who hast taught us that in returning and rest we shall be saved, in quietness and in confidence shall be our strength: By the might of thy Spirit lift us, we pray thee, to thy presence, where we may be still and know that thou art God; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen (BCP p. 832).

Mark: What is the true “bread”? Apparently, the disciples forget to save leftovers from the feeding of the 4,000 (yesterday’s reading) to make provision for the next leg of their journey (Mark 8:14). On the boat ride from somewhere on the east side of Lake Gennesaret to Bethsaida at the lake’s north end they realize they only have one loaf of bread for the whole group. Jesus seizes upon a teaching moment: “Watch out—beware of the yeast of the Pharisees and the yeast of Herod …“Why are you talking about having no bread? Do you still not perceive or understand?” (Mark 8:15b,17b). 

What is the true lesson of the bread Jesus has shared with the 5,000 west of the Jordan and with the 4,000 east of the Jordan? He, Jesus, is the only Bread from Heaven for Israel and, indeed, the only Bread for the World. The disciples need to be wary, therefore, of the principal allurements of their day: hope for salvation through the moral force of piety (as promoted by the populist party of the Pharisees), or salvation through the corridors of power (as pursued by the upper-class party of Herod). Jesus will send out his followers with a focused message that salvation comes from “none of the above.” They will need to stay on-topic: the Son of Man came to give his life as a ransom for many (Mark 10:45).

Collect for the Fourth Sunday in Lent: Gracious Father, whose blessed Son Jesus Christ came down from heaven to be the true bread which gives life to the world: Evermore give us this bread, that he may live in us, and we in him; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

Mark: What is it to “see”? The second part of today’s passage in Mark captures a pivotal moment in Jesus’s shaping these men for that mission. By some reckonings, 97% of Mark’s material appears in at least one of the other two synoptic gospels (Matthew and Luke). The story of the blind man of Bethsaida (Mark 8:22–26) is unique to Mark, which makes it special. Not only that: this miracle is the only one in all the gospels in which Jesus’s first word or touch doesn’t bring about a complete healing. This is the only miracle that needs a follow up. Think about that! Jesus does an imperfect miracle!? Tiger Woods asks for a mulligan?! Lady Gaga stops a song and says, “Can we take that again from the top?” 

There’s nothing wrong with Jesus’s healing power; but with this two-stage restoration of sight, he creates a powerful object lesson. With Jesus’s spit (ugh, yes, spit!) and first touch, the blind man of Bethsaida gains just enough sight to see blurred “men like trees walking” (Mark 8:24). It takes a second touch from Jesus for his blindness to be entirely alleviated, and for him to “see everything clearly” (Mark 8:25). 

In the very next verses, Peter will confess that Jesus is indeed the Messiah. Peter “sees”! But Jesus’s stern order not to tell anyone indicates he knows Peter “sees” only partially. Peter’s protest against Jesus’s explanation of Messiah’s mission (suffering, death, and resurrection) is proof that Peter’s vision is blurred, and that he merely sees “men like trees walking.” For Peter and the other disciples to “see everything clearly,” Jesus will have to go over the mission again and again (Mark 9:30–32; 10:32–34). 

The forty days of Lent can feel like a long time for self-examination and for consciously seeing ourselves walking with Jesus toward Calvary — a long time to live in “the valley of the shadow” — a long time to remind ourselves, “You are dust, and to dust you shall return.” It’s a necessarily long walk, though, to wean ourselves from thinking we can make ourselves better with maybe a little help from God (with the Pharisees) or that it’s OK to seek prosperity and success in the world (with the Herodians). It takes a singular and sustained focus on “the fellowship of the sufferings” if there’s any chance at all that we will enjoy “the power of resurrection” that comes with Easter. 

From the Collect for Palm Sunday: “Mercifully grant that we, walking in the way of the cross, may find it none other than the way of life and peace; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen” (BCP, p. 99, 220, 272, 420). 

Be blessed this day, 

Reggie Kidd+

God Gathers His People - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Tuesday • 3/29/2022
Tuesday of 4 Lent, Year Two 

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 97; Psalm 99; Genesis 49:29–50:14; 1 Corinthians 11:17–34; Mark 8:1–10

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

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God gathers his people. “Just as this broken bread was scattered upon the mountains and then was gathered together and became one, so may your church be gathered together from the ends of the earth into your kingdom; for yours is the glory and the power through Jesus Christ forever” — Didache 9.4. So says an early Jewish Christian catechism, nicely capturing a theme in today’s readings: God gathers his people. He gathers them to feed them, and to make them one with himself and one another. 

Genesis: God gathers the dead to himself. “I am about to be gathered to my people. Bury me with my ancestors…” — Genesis 49:29b. In instructions in advance of his death, Jacob hints at a hope for resurrection, life beyond death.* According to Jesus, “And as for the dead being raised, have you not read in the book of Moses, in the story about the bush, how God said to him, ‘I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? He is God not of the dead, but of the living…” (Mark 12:26–27a, quoting Exodus 3:6). 

This lovely and powerful centripetal force in Hebrew faith is a persistent factor in Israel’s story. At various burial sites in Israel, accessible today (Beit She’arim and Jerusalem’s Mount of Olives, for instance), the bones of deceased family members were gathered together, to wait for the day of resurrection.

Mark: Jesus gathers Jew and Gentile. “They ate and were filled; and they took up the broken pieces left over, seven baskets full” — Mark 8:8. Jesus has come to inaugurate the great ingathering — a gathering that will encompass the living and the dead, Jew and Gentile alike. 

In the sixth chapter of Mark’s Gospel, while on Israelite soil, Jesus had fed 5,000. The overflow from that feeding had filled twelve baskets, representing the renewal of the twelve tribes of Israel. Here in Mark 8, Jesus feeds 4,000 on the far side of the Jordan, in Gentile territory; and he does so after ministering among pagans in Tyre (on the coast of the Mediterranean) and in the Decapolis (in Syria and the Golan Heights). This time his disciples collect seven baskets from the overflow. Seven baskets, commentators suggest, recall the displacement of seven nations during the conquest under Joshua. ** 

With the feeding of the 5,000, Jesus symbolizes he is Manna for Israel. With the feeding of the 4,000, he symbolizes he is Bread for the World. In both feedings, he foreshadows the fourfold Eucharistic action of taking bread, blessing it, breaking it, and distributing it (Mark 6:41; 8:6). 

Jesus has come to fulfill Israel’s mission to be light for the nations, to see an end to death with God’s great end-times banquet, and to re-create the human race as the worldwide communion of love God had intended in the first place: “On that day there will be a highway from Egypt to Assyria, and the Assyrian will come into Egypt, and the Egyptian into Assyria, and the Egyptians will worship with the Assyrians. On that day Israel will be the third with Egypt and Assyria, a blessing in the midst of the earth, whom the Lord of hosts has blessed, saying, ‘Blessed be Egypt my people, and Assyria the work of my hands, and Israel my heritage’” (Isaiah 49:6; 25:6–8; 19:23–25;). 

1 Corinthians 11: The Table gathers “haves” and “have nots.” “When you come together, it is not really to eat the Lord’s supper” — 1 Corinthians 14:20. Paul is so upset because the Corinthians  are turning the most powerful symbol of God’s “gathering” intentions into a means of separating, not uniting. 

The Corinthians’ Table is a sham. It’s being used to differentiate between “haves” and “have nots.” The Corinthians “humiliate those who have nothing” by inviting them to the community meal late, after the “somebodies” have had their fill of food and drink. The favored ones get the best of meats and the finest of wines, while the “have nots” (that.is.literally.what.Paul.calls.them!) get leftovers. 

In allowing this practice, the Corinthians contribute to the surrounding society’s division, instead of creating a new unity in Christ. The destroy rather than build God’s building (1 Corinthians 3:16). They dismember rather than re-member Christ’s very Body. Paul doesn’t even want them calling what they are doing the Lord’s Supper: “When you come together, it is not really to eat the Lord’s supper” (1 Corinthians 11:20). 

Praise be! The Lord does gather, but he gathers only those who admit the worst about themselves, only those who know they need him. He gathers those who trust him in this life and the next. He gathers “haves” and “have nots.“ He gathers “those near” and “those far off” (Ephesians 2:17). He gathers all who trust him. Trust him! 

Be blessed this day, 

Reggie Kidd+

Image: iStock

* See the discussion in Nahum M. Sarna, The JPS Torah Commentary: Genesis (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1989), p. 347. Joseph, Sarna contends, calls for physicians to embalm Jacob’s body to preserve his remains for the journey back to Canaan. He does not ask for the professional embalmers who would have mummified the body in hopes of immortality.

** Bargil Pixner, With Jesus Through Galilee According to the Fifth Gospel (Liturgical Press, 1996), pp. 67-86. For the seven nations, see Deuteronomy 7:1b, Hittites, Girgashites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites; Acts 13:19.

A Vision of Creation Restored - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Monday • 3/28/2022
Monday of 4 Lent, Year Two 

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 89; Genesis 49:1–28; 1 Corinthians 10:14–11:1; Mark 7:24–37

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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Today’s passage in Genesis, comprised of Jacob’s words to his sons, is our next-to-next-to-last reading in that book before we turn to Exodus. The Book of Genesis is a book of “beginnings”: the beginning of creation, the beginning of the rule of sin and death, and the beginning of God’s campaign to restore creation. Here near the end of the book, Jacob’s words  capture the heart of the book.  

To Reuben, Simeon, and Levi: dead ends to redemption. Reuben, Jacob’s firstborn son, has violated Bilhah, one of Jacob’s wives: “You went up to your father’s bed; then you defiled it” (Genesis 49:4b; see 35:22). In doing so, Reuben shows himself not to be what the firstborn should be: preeminent in dignity and power (Genesis 49:3). Rather, he is ungovernable, “uncontrolled as water” (Genesis 49:4a). 

Simeon and Levi purport to bring to justice those who have violated their sister Dinah (Genesis 34:25–30). But they do so with self-willed, anarchic, viciousness. Their way is not God’s way: “Let my soul not enter into their council … Cursed be…their wrath, for it is cruel” (Genesis 49:6a,7ab). 

Genesis is an account of the beginning of the rule of sin and death. Brutality and violence manifested themselves in family and home life immediately after the Fall of Adam and Eve: Cain’s murder of his brother Abel. Reuben, Simeon, and Levi illustrate hell’s hold on humans. Through these words of Jacob, Genesis’s message is twofold. The family through which redemption comes needs redemption as much as anybody else. And God will not solve the problem of the Fall through entitlement and pride like Simeon’s, nor will He reverse the curse through explosive, vindictive rage like Simeon’s and Levi’s.  

To Judah: a king will come. Hope, however, does lie in the line of Judah. Somehow, as a gift of God’s profound grace, Jacob gets a vision of how God will bring redemption through this son in three ways. 

First, Jacob has given him a name that means “Praise,” a fact that Jacob underscores when he says Judah’s brothers will “praise” him (Genesis 49:8 — yehudah comes from yadah). Worship is Israel’s chief gift to the world. Through Cain the rest of the human race was given gifts of city-building and animal husbandry and manufacturing and music-making. Through Seth the people of promise were given one gift, and one gift alone: “to invoke the name of Yahweh” (Genesis 4:16–26 JB). Through Israel, however, and specifically through the line of Judah, humanity will learn how the praise of Yahweh gives value to every other aspect of life. 

Second, Jacob calls Judah a “lion’s whelp,” and compares him to a crouching lion, “Like the king of beasts—who dare rouse him? The scepter shall not depart from Judah” (Genesis 49:9,10). In Israel’s history, it is King David who embodies the hope engendered by Jacob’s words to Judah. The mighty “lion of Judah” becomes a theme of Jewish art and the symbol of messianic expectation. The Book of Revelation identifies Jesus Christ as the great fulfillment of these words: “See, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has conquered, so he can open the scroll of the seven seals…” (Revelation 5:5). 

Third, Jacob dimly perceives a mystery surrounding the identity of the Lion of the tribe of Judah. Older, more wooden, translations respect this mystery when they translate Genesis 49:10c, “…until Shiloh comes.” The term is really quite ambiguous — it could mean a place, it could mean tribute, it could be a veiled reference to the Messiah as “Sent One.” 

I’d prefer to leave the question of the interpretation of the term open. I think it may be here as a reminder that the Old Testament is a book filled with hints and shadows, adumbrations and whispers, figures and mysteries of marvelous and wonderful things to come. After all, when, in the Book of Revelation, John is permitted to see that Jesus is the great Lion of Judah, he also sees that he is simultaneously “a Lamb standing as if it had been slaughtered,” and therefore worthy both to open the scrolls and “to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing!” (Revelation 5:6,12). 

Jacob’s son Judah will bequeath us a son —a Son like no other, a Son to teach the world to praise Yahweh, a Son to rule as King, and a Son to give his life a ransom for many. 

To Joseph: a vision of creation restored. A promise of the re-Edenization of the world. Jacob’s words to Joseph climax in the vision of blessing flowing through Abraham’s line to all of creation, bringing in return the blessing of heaven above, of the deep that lies beneath, of the breasts and the womb, of fathers and ancestors, of everlasting hills. It’s a vision of all creation released from the forces of death and decay and destruction and dissolution. 

At its heart, Genesis is the story of the beginning of the end of the darkness that fell upon Eden. May this Lenten season prepare us to own the darkness of sin that led our Savior to his cruel cross, that we may rejoice anew in the promise of a new day that his resurrection on Easter Day brings. 

Be blessed this day. 

Reggie Kidd+

Image: Pixabay

A Rich Heritage of Spiritual Pilgrimage - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Friday • 3/25/2022
Friday of 3 Epiphany, Year Two 

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 88; Genesis 47:1–26; 1 Corinthians 9:16–27; 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)

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As we near the end of Genesis and thus approach the close of Jacob’s life, it’s wonderful to see three aspects of his self-understanding that have matured over time: his capacity to bless, his understanding of himself as a pilgrim, and his perspective on suffering.

Jacob blesses. When Jacob finally appears before Pharaoh, he does for the Egyptian king what Yahweh told Abraham he and his progeny would do for nations: “…and Jacob blessed Pharaoh…”  (Genesis 47:7c; compare Genesis 12). And then once again at the end of their interview, “Then Jacob blessed Pharaoh, and went out from the presence of Pharaoh” (Genesis 47:10). Blessings fore and aft. Blessings coming and going. The power and the authority to bring a good and kind and beneficent word from God to the world — that is the special mission of Abraham and his children. 

Through Joseph’s able administration during the famine, the people of Egypt proclaim him “Savior.” For a long time, the Israelites prosper and flourish in their Egyptian home-away-from-home. 

The irony is not to be missed that the mutual blessing and prosperity that transpire between Egyptians and Israelites here at the end of Genesis contrasts with the situation 400 years later at the beginning of Exodus, when another Pharaoh “who knew not Joseph” curses Israel, and is himself cursed as a result. 

Jacob is a pilgrim. “The years of my pilgrimage….” (Genesis 47:9b KJV; and see Deuteronomy 26:5). For all his heart-investment in his family and in the land of Canaan, Jacob, along with his father Isaac and his grandfather Abraham, seek more than earthly goals. Their life-journey has as its aim, “the city that has foundations, whose architect and builder is God” (Hebrews 11:9–10). They are on a purposeful journey through life. 

Sojourning creates a powerful impact on Israelites’ sensibilities. This mindset carries over to all who call themselves sons and daughters of Abraham. It is nicely captured in the hidden king Aragon’s poem from J. R. R. Tolkien’s Fellowship of the Ring: 

All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost;
The old that is strong does not wither,
Deep roots are not reached by the frost.

From the ashes a fire shall be woken,
A light from the shadows shall spring;
Renewed shall be blade that was broken,
The crownless again shall be king.

― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

Jacob stands near the fountainhead of a rich spiritual heritage of pilgrimage. As a young man Vincent Van Gogh aspired to the Christian ministry. One sermon from the days of that quest has been preserved for us. Vincent closes his sermon this way: “And when each of us goes back to the daily things and daily duties let us not forget that things are not what they seem, that God by the things of daily life teacheth us higher things, that our life is a pilgrim’s progress, and that we are strangers on the earth, but that we have a God and father who preserveth strangers, – and that we are all brethren.”

Jacob understands suffering. “…few and hard have been the years of my life… (Genesis 47:9d). As Jacob notes, the pilgrim’s life is not easy. Still, understanding that “not all those who wander are lost” gives God’s pilgrim-people resilience in the face of hardship. 

It is a theme that animates Paul’s writing, and that is especially heightened in his letters to the self-satisfied Corinthians. For the pilgrim Van Gogh, 2 Corinthians 6:10 was especially captivating and motivating: “…as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, yet possessing everything.” In the sermon we cited above, Vincent expands on this verse: “And the pilgrim goes on sorrowful yet always rejoicing — sorrowful because it is so far off and the road so long. Hopeful as he looks up to the eternal city far away, resplendent in the evening glow….” 

I pray that like Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebekah, Jacob and his wives and sons, we may receive God’s blessing in such a way that we become a blessing to those around us. And may we take our place alongside Vincent and generations of saints as pilgrims on the way. May we always, always have a sober yet hopeful perspective on the trials that come with the journey toward the “city that has foundations, whose builder and architect is God.”

Be blessed this day, 

Reggie Kidd+

An Island of Peace - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Thursday • 3/24/2022
Thursday of 3 Epiphany, Year Two

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 83; Genesis 46:1–7,28–34; 1 Corinthians 9:1–15; 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)

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In Genesis 46, seventy souls go down to Egypt. They go with Yahweh’s blessing. 400 years later they will depart from there a mighty nation. When, in Mark 6, Jesus feeds 5,000 and recovers 12 baskets of leftovers, he signals that Yahweh’s great nation is being reconstituted around him, and around the meal where he “takes” bread, “blesses” it, “breaks” it, and “gives” it. 

Jesus is calm in the storm. All four gospel writers recount the feeding of the 5,000, but one subtle feature of Mark’s account stands out. Jesus is an island of calm and rest in a sea of frenetic activity. Mark tells us that the disciples have just returned from a mission in which they have spent themselves teaching and exercising “authority over the unclean spirits” (Mark 6:13b). When the apostles, whom he has sent out in pairs, come back together, they gather around him and start telling “him all that they had done and taught” (Mark 6:30). Imagine the buzz and excitement in that setting!

While all this energy is swirling around, Jesus says, “‘Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest a while.’ For many were coming and going, and they had no leisure even to eat” (Mark 6:31). Even then, notes Mark, while they are on their way to a deserted place for a retreat, “many saw them going and recognized them, and they hurried there on foot from all the towns and arrived ahead of them” (Mark 6:33). Jesus and the disciples are sailing across Lake Gennesaret. Meanwhile a crowd is racing along the shoreline to beat them to their destination. 

Jesus desires rest for his disciples, but his compassion for “sheep without a shepherd” prompts him to teach “many things” to the crowd that has arrived ahead of them. The teaching runs so long that the day is ending. The disciples want to disacknowledge that they have any responsibility for the still-gathered multitude. “This is a deserted place, and the hour is now very late; send them away…” — Mark 7:35b. 

I sense such calm in Jesus’s instructions to bless and distribute the five loaves and two fishes. An island of peace in the storm, he provides the meal the people need, and more: “And all ate and were filled; and they took up twelve baskets full of broken pieces and of the fish” (Mark 7:42–43). 

In turbulent times like ours, it’s good to be reminded of the tranquility of spirit with which our Savior met, and continues to meet, every contingency. He met, and he meets, every emergency with equilibrium. He can make two loaves and five fishes feed 5,000, and he can provide exhausted souls the energy to keep giving. If all that is true, we can pray that he will make tyrants tremble, turn fools from their folly, raise up righteous people to protect the innocent, and enable fainting hearts to find courage. 

Collect for Peace: Almighty God, kindle, we pray, in every heart the true love of peace, and guide with your wisdom those who take counsel for the nations of the earth, that in tranquility your dominion may increase until the earth is filled with the knowledge of your love; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen. (BCP, p. 258)

Be blessed this day, 

Reggie Kidd+

Image: Pixabay

Redemption, Not Recrimination - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Wednesday • 3/23/2022
Wednesday of 3 Lent, Year Two

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 119:97–120; Genesis 45:16–28; 1 Corinthians 8:1–13; Mark 6:13–29

For thoughts on 1 Corinthians 8:1–13 from 9/29/2021, see  “Love vs. Knowledge”

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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Two perceptive quotes on Genesis 45 by commentator Derek Kidner guide my meditations this morning. First, Jacob brings his family from Israel to Egypt, marking “a turning point…, long foretold (15:13–16): the beginning of a phase of isolation…, and of eventual bondage and deliverance which would produce a people that for ever after knew itself redeemed as well as called.” * 

Redeemed as well as called. Israel became “a people that forever after knew itself redeemed as well as called,” notes Kidner. That’s really quite a thought. Israel’s rescue from Egypt, of course, is a rescue from more than physical oppressors. It’s redemption from the Angel of Death that would have taken Israelite firstborn as well as Egyptian, but for the shed blood of the Passover lambs. It’s redemption through waters that would have drowned Israelites as well as Egyptians. It’s redemption by manna graciously falling from the skies despite the people’s grumbling and complaining. It’s redemption under the leadership of the Glory Cloud despite constant whining about how great it would be to turn around and go back!

That’s the story of the Bible. Theologians of the early church even found themselves giving thanks to God for “the happy fall” (felix culpa) that made redemption necessary. We love God more, the suggestion goes, more desperately, more passionately, more deeply because, in Christ, we know what it is to be “wonderfully created, and yet more wonderfully restored” (BCP, p. 214). 

No need for recrimination. Second, Kidner adds an intriguing remark about Genesis 45:24, which says, “Then he sent his brothers on their way, and as they were leaving he said to them, ‘Do not quarrel along the way.’” Kidner comments: “Joseph’s parting shot was realistic, for the ancient crime was now bound to come to light before their father, and mutual accusations were likely to proliferate (cf. 42:22). * 

Indeed, it’s not difficult to imagine Jacob’s reaction to finding out the son he thought he had lost is in Egypt. Elation at first, of course. But then the question: It was reported that Joseph was dead. How is he alive? What is he doing in Egypt? How did he get there? The whole story will come out, and it’s not likely to be a pretty picture. Joseph anticipates the recriminations and says, “Let it go.” 

In this season of Lent it’s good to be reminded how important it is not to carry grudges. Grievances can embitter and cripple us in all sorts of ways. Lent is a good time to seek reconciliation with God and with one another. Jesus walked the Via Dolorosa to take all our estrangement and woundedness into himself, to take it with him into the tomb, and to leave it there. It’s good for us consciously and freely to give it to him and bid it a final farewell. 

Be blessed this day,

Reggie Kidd+

Image: Adaptation, Pixabay

* Derek Kidner, Genesis, p. 208. 

God's Guiding Hand - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Tuesday • 3/22/2022
Tuesday of 3 Lent, Year Two 

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 78; Genesis 45:1–15; 1 Corinthians 7:32–40; 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)

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The very heart of biblical faith lies in Joseph’s response to his brothers: “It was not you who sent me here, but God….”

Joseph’s confidence in God’s guiding hand. Joseph has all along sensed that God was preserving him and protecting him. Joseph knows a God who brings about good despite and even through all the evil thrust upon him. All of it — being attacked and sold by these very brothers, being taken as a slave into Egypt, being falsely accused by Pharaoh’s wife, and being forgotten by Pharaoh’s cupbearer — all of it Joseph understood to be firmly in the grip of a higher hand that was working a larger purpose toward a good end. That end was good for Joseph himself, good for those he cared about, good for the whole world. He assures his brothers: “So it was not you who sent me here, but God; he has made me a father to Pharaoh, and lord of all his house and ruler over all the land of Egypt” (Genesis 45:8).

Joseph’s heart of compassion. It’s easy to think that believing in God’s benevolent control of all things, including evil, leaves one with a cold, calculating determinism. As though people’s choices don’t matter, and as though people’s hurts along the way don’t matter either. As though “happy endings” come out of a divinely preprogrammed “Goodness” dispenser. But that’s not the case at all. Ours is not an unfeeling God, and he has made us to feel with feelings he has given us. Joseph is emotionally engaged with what’s happening around him. 

In today’s reading Joseph has carefully orchestrated things in such a way as to give his brothers a chance to recognize their sin and be transformed by grace.  Beholding a breakthrough on that front releases a flood of tears. When he sees his brother Judah’s willingness to exchange his own freedom for their youngest brother Benjamin, “Joseph could no longer control himself …  he wept so loudly that the Egyptians heard it, and the household of Pharaoh heard it … Then he fell upon his brother Benjamin’s neck and wept … And he kissed all his brothers and wept upon them…” (Genesis 45:1,2,14,15). 

Tbe nimbleness of a redeemed person’s spirit is that they can be stricken with grief over their own sufferings and failings and over the sufferings and failings of others — and at the same time confident that God has the capacity and the intent to turn the worst evil into good. The God of the Bible creates beauty out of ugliness, peace out of strife, and order out of chaos. 

Scripture is filled with the understanding that God can use evil to effect his own good purposes. Fearlessly, the formerly craven Peter proclaims to the Sanhedrin that God had raised from the dead the one they had crucified: the stone the builder had rejected has become the cornerstone. The ultimate evil-into-good, of course, is the prayer recited by  the Jerusalem church after Peter and John are released from prison: 

“Sovereign Lord, who made the heaven and the earth, the sea, and everything in them, it is you who said by the Holy Spirit through our ancestor David, your servant: 

‘Why did the Gentiles rage,
    and the peoples imagine vain things?
The kings of the earth took their stand,
    and the rulers have gathered together
        against the Lord and against his Messiah.’

For in this city, in fact, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, gathered together against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed, to do whatever your hand and your plan had predestined to take place. And now, Lord, look at their threats, and grant to your servants to speak your word with all boldness, while you stretch out your hand to heal, and signs and wonders are performed through the name of your holy servant Jesus” (Acts 4:24b–30; citing Psalm 2:1–2). 

God brought the greatest good (the salvation of the world) out of the greatest evil (the unjust crucifixion of his own Son). There’s no good thing he cannot accomplish, today, or in the future. And he promises that there will be not one iota of evil that will prevail on the last day. Whether it’s “turn[ing] the hearts of parents to their children and the hearts of children to their parents … and the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous” (Malachi 4:6; Luke 1:16b), or whether it’s calling off the dogs of war or breathing godliness back into an apostate culture or taming deadly viruses—none of it is beyond him. 

Be blessed this day, 

Reggie Kidd+

Image: Adaptation, Pixabay image

The Sloppy Already/Not Yet - Daily Devotions with the Dean (Copy)

Monday • 3/21/2022
Monday of 3 Lent, Year Two 

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 80; Genesis 44:18–34; 1 Corinthians 7:25–31; 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)

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Today’s readings offer an intriguing juxtaposition of passages about familial love. In Genesis 44, Jacob’s “life is bound up in the boy’s life,” so much so that if something were to happen to Benjamin (Jacob’s youngest son), Simeon claims, it would kill their father (Genesis 44:30–31). In Mark 5, Jairus, a leader of the synagogue, is so anxious about his daughter’s health, he seeks out Jesus, throws himself at his feet, and repeatedly begs Jesus to come and help her. 

Familial love is powerful and good. The 5th Commandment concerns the parent-child bond, the 7th Commandment concerns marital faithfulness, and the 10th commandment assures that marital faithfulness is as much about heart as about body. God blesses the parental and marital ties that bind. Paul lists “lack of natural (i.e., familial) affection” (astorgos) as one characteristic of universal sin and a special sign of end-times wickedness (Romans 1:31 2 Timothy 3:3). 

At the same time, Jesus challenges any claim that familial ties are more important than love for him: “Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me…and there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven” and “Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple. 27 Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple” (Matthew 10:37; 19:12c; Luke 14:26–27). 

Paul echoes Jesus when, in 1 Corinthians, he urges Corinthians not to put aspirations for marriage and family life ahead of priorities about life with God. There are important questions about, say, whether or not to get married (and take on all the attendant responsibilities), or whether to remarry if you’ve been divorced or widowed. But Paul wants to make sure we put family-life questions in their place. As pointers to, and supports for, God’s love, those relationships are precious. As substitutes for, and blocks against, God’s love, those relationships are sinful. Family life is penultimate. Life with God is ultimate. 

In The Great Divorce, C. S. Lewis presents a parable about an imaginary bus trip some inhabitants from hell make to the outskirts of paradise:

A female ghost (whose name we never learn) is furious that Heaven will not give to her Robert, the husband she had sent to an early grave through her obsessive pushiness. On earth, Robert had been no more than a project for her and a means to her social ambitions. And she cannot imagine an afterlife in which he could be happy apart from her efforts to improve him: “Please, please! I’m so miserable. I must have someone to—to do things to.” Like “a dying candle flame,” she simply snaps, disappearing into a nothingness as empty as her earthly existence. 

In another scene, one of Heaven’s hosts informs Pam, the overbearing and controlling mother of Michael, that she is trapped in the hell of “your merely instinctive love for your child (tigresses share that, you know!).” God, continues Heaven’s host, wanted to turn that tigress-love “into something better. He wanted you to love Michael as He understands love. You cannot love a fellow-creature fully till you love God.” 

Pam cannot understand that without love of God, a mother’s love can be “uncontrolled and fierce and monomaniac.” It can become evil, a fact that cannot be hidden under the veil of a claim that “Mother-love” is “the highest and holiest feeling in human nature.” For, Lewis explains, “no natural feelings are high or low, holy or unholy, in themselves. They are all holy when God’s hand is on the rein. They all go bad when they set up on their own and make themselves into false gods.” 

In Christ, you see, all relationships are redeemable. Without him, all are subject to demonic possession. In Lent, may we renounce all idolatries, including ones that are relational. May we embrace lives of surrender — surrender of ourselves to our Sovereign and Lord, and surrender of our loved ones to His care and oversight. 

Be blessed this day, 

Reggie Kidd+

Image: Adaptation, Pixabay

C. S. Lewis, The Great Divorce, chapters 10 and 11.