A Dramatic Redemption - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Wednesday • 11/8/2023 •
Wednesday of the Twenty-third Week After Pentecost (Proper 26) 

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 72; Nehemiah 13:4–22; Revelation 12:1-12; Matthew 13:53–58 

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

Welcome to Daily Office Devotions, where every Monday through Friday we ask how God might direct our lives from that day’s Scripture readings, as given in the Book of Common Prayer. I’m Reggie Kidd, and I’m grateful to be with you. This Wednesday in the Season After Pentecost our readings come from Proper 26 of Year 1 in the Daily Office Lectionary.  

Nehemiah: a balanced life. Ezra and Nehemiah belong to a beautiful season in redemptive history. What is compelling and attractive is the comprehensiveness of their vision of life for bearers of the image of God. It’s a vision of basking in God’s Word: Ezra reads the Law (Nehemiah 8:1–8). It’s a vision of gathering for worship: the people resume the sacred festivals (Nehemiah 8:9–18). And it’s a vision of lives being offered as living sacrifices, of people doing justice, loving mercy, and walking humbly before God. Ezra and Nehemiah reestablish the moral center of people’s lives.  

The last of these concerns is the theme of today’s reading in Nehemiah. After having been away from Persia for twelve years, Nehemiah had been required to return to Artaxerxes’s service. “After some time,” he explains, “I asked leave of the king and returned to Jerusalem” (Nehemiah 13:6b–7a). Upon his return, he finds that in his absence things have not gone well. Instead of feeding the sheep, spiritual shepherds are fleecing the sheep. The temple’s stewards have converted Yahweh’s temple into a marketplace for selling religious “benefits” for personal profit. People have stopped supporting the Levites, and so he asks, “Why is the house of God forsaken?” (Nehemiah 13:11). Meanwhile, merchants are making a mockery of sacred time. The malls are open on the sabbath (Nehemiah 13:15–19). 

Nehemiah responds by booting those who had misappropriated temple grounds, cleanses the temple of stuff that doesn’t belong there (“I threw all the household furniture of Tobiah out of the room” — Nehemiah 13:8), returns sacred objects to their rightful place, reinstitutes tithes, brings the Levites back onto the temple staff, shuts down the sabbath markets, and informs the merchants not to come on the sabbath: “If you do so again, I will lay hands on you” (Nehemiah 13:21).  

Nehemiah provides a glimpse ahead of time into the passion that drove Jesus to take a stand against the unjust and irreligious use of the temple in his own day (Matthew 21:10–17; Mark 11:15–17; Luke 19:45–46; John 2:13–17). It’s not enough to believe the right things and go through the motions of worship. There’s a non-negotiable life that aligns with those beliefs and with that worship. Without this life, the beliefs and the worship are worthless.  

In combination, though, orthopistia (right belief), orthodoxia (right worship), and orthopraxis (right behavior) embody God’s life powerfully, and make the most compelling statement to the world about who he is. One of the great gifts of the Ezra-Nehemiah chapter of the biblical story is to communicate this great truth to us.  

Image: Zion72, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Revelation: a dramatic redemption. Today’s reading in Revelation portrays our redemption in a dramatic and unique way. It’s a breathtaking perspective: A great sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet and a crown of twelve stars on her head. This regal woman is about to give birth to “a son, a male child, who is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron” (Revelation 12:1,2,5). The Book of Revelation demands nuance and humility of interpretation. But I’m certain that this woman is Mary from God’s perspective: an embodiment of all that Israel was called to be. With her twelve-starred crown and birth pangs, she is both kingdom of priests and bride of God, bearing God’s life into the world.  

A dragon, i.e., Satan, would kill the child at birth (as well he attempted to do through Herod the Great — Matthew 2). And even Satan’s apparent success on the Cross is a failure, “because it was impossible for him to be held in [death’s] power” (Acts 2:24). Victorious over death, the “Child” is taken up to heaven at his ascension (Acts 1:1–11).  

Now, the woman who has represented Mary-as-Israel becomes the Church, the future Bride of Christ (see Revelation 19). For now, she is whisked into “the wilderness, where she has a place prepared by God, so that there she can be nourished for one thousand two hundred sixty days”—i.e., the same three and a half years by which Revelation describes the church-age in terms of a “short” season of tribulation.  

In the wilderness of her sojourn, the woman—i.e., the Church—will need nourishment and protection because a battle has broken out in heaven (Revelation 12:7). Michael the archangel defeats the dragon Satan, who is cast out of heaven and hurled to earth where he will do what damage he can to the creation and the creatures whom God loves—especially to God’s beloved Bride-to-be, the Church (Revelation 12:8–9).  

Even as she experiences the travails of her persecution (as recorded in the rest of the verses in Revelation 12, which the daily lectionary, alas, leaves out!), heaven’s song rings through:  

“Now have come the salvation and the power 
    and the kingdom of our God 
    and the authority of his Messiah,  
for the accuser of our comrades has been thrown down, 
    who accuses them day and night before our God. 
11 But they have conquered him by the blood of the Lamb 
    and by the word of their testimony, 
for they did not cling to life even in the face of death. 
12 Rejoice then, you heavens 
    and those who dwell in them! 
But woe to the earth and the sea, 
    for the devil has come down to you 
with great wrath, 
    because he knows that his time is short!” (Revelation 12:10–12).  

I pray we know what it is to believe accurately, to worship rightly, to live obediently, and to rejoice in the wonder of God’s defeat of evil even amid our daily struggle against it.  

Be blessed this day, 

Reggie Kidd+ 

The Church Protected and Prevailing - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Tuesday • 11/7/2023 •
Tuesday of the Twenty-third Week After Pentecost (Proper 26) 

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 61; Psalm 62; Nehemiah 12:27–31a,42b–47; Revelation 11:1–19; Matthew 13:44–52 

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

Welcome to Daily Office Devotions, where every Monday through Friday we draw insights from that day’s Scripture readings, as given in the Book of Common Prayer. I’m Reggie Kidd, and I’m grateful to be with you. This Tuesday in the Season After Pentecost our readings come from Proper 26 of Year 1 in the Daily Office Lectionary.  

Revelation 11: the church protected and prevailing 

Looking back and looking ahead. In Revelation 10, John is instructed to eat a little scroll. It is sweet and bitter, because its message is both good news and bad news, both blessing and curse. Accordingly, from Revelation 12 to the end of the book, Revelation will forecast the destiny of two symbolic women: the “bride of Christ” for whom a wedding banquet is being prepared in a new heaven and new earth (Revelation 19–22), and “the great whore [of Babylon] who is seated on many waters, with whom the kings of the earth have committed fornication, and with the wine of whose fornication the inhabitants of the earth have become drunk” (Revelation 17:1b–2). Two women, representing humanities with two destinies. The book’s message to us is: choose carefully which future is yours.  

Image: "Heaven" by Boston Public Library is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 

Measuring time. Here in Revelation 11, in preparation for the unfolding of the drama contrasting the destinies of the bride of Christ and the whore of Babylon, John is given perspective on God’s provision and protection during “three-and-a-half years” of intense tribulation (Revelation 11:3).  

In their juxtaposition in the book of Revelation, two important numbers represent the duration of the church’s existence between Christ’s two comings: three-and-a-half years, and a thousand years. These numbers are, I believe (and it is a matter of interpretation), symbolic rather than literal. The church age is at one and the same time a short period in which Christians testify despite strong resistance (Revelation 11:3; 12:6,14; 13:5), and also a long period in which they share in Christ’s reign as a kingdom of priests (Revelation 20:2).  

Measuring the temple. Some interpreters believe the measuring of the temple in Revelation 11 has in view either the physical temple that no longer stands in Jerusalem or a temple that will one day be rebuilt there. I do not believe either is in view. I believe God is assuring John and readers like you and me that God protects and preserves the faithful who dwell in the new temple that has been under construction since Christ rose from the dead (John 2:19–20; 1 Corinthians 3:9; 6:19; Ephesians 2:19–22; Hebrews 3:6; 1 Peter 2:4–5). Right now, God dwells among his people, and despite the storm of tribulation through which they live, he neither abandons them nor forsakes them. Thus, Revelation 11:4–10 promises “oil” to keep the “lamps” of the temple lit, and power and authority to the words of the witnesses.  

What lies ahead: martyrdom and vindication. The New Testament consistently pictures a day that lies ahead of us when, by God’s permission, there will be something that New Testament theologian Herman Ridderbos calls “an explosion of evil.” In his epistles, John refers to “the Antichrist” and “the spirit of Antichrist” (1 John 2:18,22; 4:3; 2 John 7). In Revelation, John describes “the war against the Lamb and his people,” empowered by the unleashed dragon Satan (Revelation 12:9; 20:7–9a), effected through the great beast that emerges from the sea (Revelation 13), and inflaming all those in thrall to the whore of Babylon.  

In Revelation 11, John gets a preview of how challenging those days will be for God’s people: “When they have finished their testimony, the beast that comes up from the bottomless pit will make war on them and conquer them and kill them” (Revelation 11:7). With the unleashing of Satan, the rise of the beast, and the attack of the armies of the whore of Babylon, an intense season of martyrdom lies ahead. But that season of intense suffering will be limited to a symbolic “three and a half days,” and will be followed by Christ’s return and our resurrection. Vindication will come with the sounding of the seventh trumpet, the opening of God’s temple in heaven, a raining down of a storm of judgment against all lawlessness (Revelation 11:15–19), the return of Christ in glory (Revelation 19:11–21), and the establishment of God’s final reign (especially Revelation 20:9b–22:21). On that day, the church below will join the song of the church above: “The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Messiah, and he will reign forever and ever” (Revelation 11:15).  

Meanwhile, while John is told not to write down everything he sees (Revelation 10:4), he is told to write this down for us: “The one who overcomes I will make a pillar in the temple of my God … The one who overcomes I will grant to sit with me on my throne … The one who overcomes will inherit these things, and I will be their God and they will be my son” (Revelation 3:12,21; 21:7, my translation).  

Be blessed this day,  

Reggie Kidd+ 

Wheat and Tares - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Monday • 11/6/2023 •
Monday of the Twenty-third Week After Pentecost (Proper 26) 

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 56; Psalm 57; Nehemiah 6:1–19; Revelation 10:1–11; Matthew 13:36–43 

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) 

Welcome to Daily Office Devotions, where every Monday through Friday we explore that day’s Scripture readings, as given in the Book of Common Prayer. I’m Reggie Kidd. Thanks for joining me. This Monday in the Season After Pentecost our readings finds us in Proper 26 of Year 1 in the Daily Office Lectionary.  

Wheat and Tares 

Anger is the prevailing mood of our day—cleansing, purging, “righteous” anger. One might have thought that the troubles of today’s world would bring us all together in a united campaign against a common enemy. Instead, it’s pushed us further into our separate corners, pitting “my rights” folks against “our common good” folks. In a range of matters political, racial, and economic, rage runs deep. Terms like “block,” “unfriend,” “cancel” have taken on new meaning. They are weapons of moral indignation, as people cleanse their worlds of those they view as unjust, ill-informed, and unholy.  

* Reggie M. Kidd, “Matthew,” in Michael J. Krueger (ed.), A Biblical-Theological Introduction to the New Testament (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2016), 52–53. 

With his parable of “The Wheat and the Tares” (told in last Friday’s gospel reading and explained in today’s), Jesus urges us to hit the pause button. In brief, as I put it in another setting, “The master of the field is perfectly willing to allow weeds to get as much care as the wheat until the appointed time for making all things right. When the time for final judgment comes, the angels, not the workers, will do the final sorting.”* 

In God’s providence, “the children of promise” and “the children of the flesh,” or, to use another biblical image, “the sons of light” and “the sons of darkness,” live side by side until Christ returns to bring final judgment. It’s been that way since God protected Cain following Abel’s death (Genesis 4:1–16). God bestowed culture-building gifts to the line of Cain, while giving the gift of worship to children of the line of Seth (Genesis 4:17–21,25–26). As strange as it may seem to us, Cain’s descendants and Seth’s descendants live in interdependence to one another. Christ, and Christ alone, will separate “wheat” from “tares” and “sheep” from “goats” (Matthew 13 and 25), and that, at a time not chosen by him, but appointed by his Father (Mark 13:32; Matthew 24:36).  

As I was pondering this puzzling parable, I stumbled upon reflections written by Augustine, the North African 5th century bishop. He too lived in a time when people’s fuses were short. The redemptive hopes for a Christianized Roman Empire were falling short: pagans were asking why barbarians were still invading 100 years after Constantine’s conversion, and why riotous living had not been put in check. Here, Augustine writes the first Christian philosophy of history. In it, he calls for patience. The human story, he argues, is one of the simultaneous emergence of, and the divergence between, the “City of God” and the “City of Man.” Each “city” becomes more itself.  

In the previous parable about the Sower and the Seed, Augustine reminds his readers, Jesus warns us not to be “stony ground,” “shallow ground,” or “thorny places” (Matthew 13:1–9,18–23). Rather, we should, says Augustine, “plough the hard ground, cast the stones out of the field, pluck up the thorns out of it.” Guard, in other words, against a hard heart that will reject God’s Word. Avoid a shallowness of soul where God’s love will find no root. Remove things like lust and the cares of this world that would choke the life out of us. Instead, our lives should be “good ground,” where God’s Word gets planted deep, and produces much fruit.  

In this next parable about Wheat and Tares, Jesus changes the image (Matthew 13:24–30,36–43). We now are what comes up out of the ground. We are either wheat that nourishes, or tares (likely, darnel) that poison. The scary thing is that the wheat and the darnel plant look alike. Both will sit side by side in church, says Augustine, and be indistinguishable from the outside. Jesus warns us, of course, not to let ourselves be tares: life-giving in appearance, but death-dealing in actuality. Comments Augustine:  

I am addressing the tares; but the sheep themselves are the tares. O evil Christians, O you, who in filling only press the Church by your evil lives; amend yourselves before the harvest come … He is requiring repentance of you … and may it be so that they who today are tares, may tomorrow be wheat. 

That’s something we might very well expect Jesus to say. What’s a bit surprising is what he says to the good wheat: Don’t think it’s your job to get rid of the tares. You’ll destroy yourselves if you do. As Augustine puts it:   

Why are you so hasty, [Jesus] says, you servants full of zeal? You see evil Christians among the good; and you wish to root up the evil ones; be quiet, it is not the time of harvest. That time will come, may it only find you wheat! … O you Christians, whose lives are good, you sigh and groan as being few among many, few among very many. The winter will pass away, the summer will come; lo! The harvest will soon be here. …  

Let the good tolerate the bad; let the bad change themselves, and imitate the good. Let us all, if it may be so, attain to God. 

Almost as if to summarize this parable, and certainly to address people who live in a day like Augustine’s and ours, James the brother of Jesus puts it this way: “the wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God” (James 1:20 KJV).   

Be blessed this day,  

Reggie Kidd+ 

The Welfare of the City - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Friday • 11/3/2023 •
Friday of the Twenty-second Week After Pentecost (Proper 25) 

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 40; Psalm 54; Nehemiah 2:1–20; Revelation 6:12–7:4; Matthew 13:24–30 

And inserting the normal readings for Monday (which happens to be All Saints Day): Psalm 56; Psalm 57; Nehemiah 6:1–19; Revelation 10:1–11; Matthew 13:36–43 

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

Welcome to Daily Office Devotions, where every Monday through Friday we bring to our lives that day’s Scripture readings, as given in the Book of Common Prayer. I’m Reggie Kidd, and I’m grateful to be with you this Friday in the Season After Pentecost. We are in Proper 25 of Year 1 of the Daily Office Lectionary.  

Nehemiah represents a second wave of efforts in the post-exilic restoration of Judah and Jerusalem. Ezra before him had concentrated on the temple. Nehemiah will be known for rebuilding the city wall. In the year 445 B.C., some 93 years after Persia’s King Cyrus had decreed the return of Jews to Jerusalem, Nehemiah is still in Persia, ministering in the court of Persia’s Artaxerxes II. He does so in the spirit of Jeremiah’s earlier exhortation in advance of exile: “[S]eek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare” (Jeremiah 29:7).  

Two notes about what is going on in Nehemiah’s heart are intriguing.  

Nehemiah’s “sadness of the heart.” A friend once told me that if I haven’t learned the rules of poker (which I never have), I would be wise never to do so. “You’re just too easy to read. In poker, you’d lose your shirt.” Maybe that’s why I love Nehemiah. He’s “seeking the welfare of the city” of his exile, faithfully and honorably serving as wine-bearer for the Persian king, in fact. But his affections lie in the country his people had been cast out of a century and a half earlier. Artaxerxes reads him like a book: “Why is your face sad, since you are not sick? This can only be sadness of the heart” (Nehemiah 2:2).  

Image: The Eran Laor Cartographic Collection, National Library of Israel, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons 

Nehemiah answers honestly, and perhaps courageously: “Why should my face not be sad, when the city, the place of my ancestors’ graves, lies waste, and its gates have been destroyed by fire?” (Nehemiah 2:3). The exchange leads to Artaxerxes sending Nehemiah to Jerusalem, not only with his blessing, but with his official endorsement and support for Nehemiah’s efforts “to seek the welfare of the people of Israel” (Nehemiah 2:10).  

Here’s the payoff for a dual commitment to love God and love neighbor. Nehemiah’s heart had been shaped by affection for the Lord, after the example of people like Daniel, who, we are told, prayed towards Jerusalem three times a day (Daniel 6:10). And, Nehemiah’s heart had been shaped by the fact that, in obedience to the God of the whole earth, he had been “seeking the welfare of the city” of his exile, where God’s providence had landed him.  

Nehemiah’s is a case in which something good happens when what’s in the heart “leaks” out. Sometimes it’s not a bad thing when somebody can read you like a book. Sometimes emotional transparency is redemptive.  

Nehemiah’s secret plans of the heart. At the same time, there’s much to admire in Nehemiah’s caginess in holding close to the vest his plans for rebuilding Jerusalem until he has studied closely the situation on the ground. Unlike me, Nehemiah can, it turns out, hold a poker face!  

Three days after his arrival in Jerusalem, he says, “… I got up during the night, I and a few men with me; I told no one what my God had put into my heart to do for Jerusalem. The only animal I took was the animal I rode” (Nehemiah 2:12). Secretly, he circuits the city by night to assess the extent of the damage to the city wall, how vulnerable the city is, and how great the task of rebuilding will be. Then, and only then, he tells the Jewish leaders and people his plans: “‘You see the trouble we are in, how Jerusalem lies in ruins with its gates burned. Come, let us rebuild the wall of Jerusalem, so that we may no longer suffer disgrace.’ I told them that the hand of my God had been gracious upon me, and also the words that the king had spoken to me. Then they said, ‘Let us start building!’ So they committed themselves to the common good” (Nehemiah 2:17–18).  

It’s as though Nehemiah had heard ahead of time Jesus’s exhortation to count your resources before you commit yourself to battle (Luke 14:31). With the confidence of God’s call, the Persian king’s imprimatur, and the people’s commitment to the work, he is ready to stand up to resistance from the surrounding non-Jewish overlords who have a vested interest in keeping Jerusalem in rubble. To them, he is now ready to assert: “The God of heaven is the one who will give us success, and we his servants are going to start building; but you have no share or claim or historic right in Jerusalem” (Nehemiah 2:19).  

May God grant us hearts like Nehemiah’s, at once pliable and sagacious. 

Be blessed this day, 

Reggie Kidd+ 

Nehemiah's night tour along the walls of Jerusalem as described in the book of Nehemiah chapter two. Edited by Alon Adir, usually following the hypotheses presented in the World of the Bible encyclopedia - Vol. Daniel, Ezra and Nehemiah. The site scores and the tour route were illustrated on a topographic map of Jerusalem donated by the Eran Collection

A Book of Hope - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Thursday • 11/2/2023 •
Thursday of the Twenty-second Week After Pentecost (Proper 25) 

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 50; Nehemiah 1:1–11; Revelation 5:11–6:11; Matthew 13:18–23 

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) 

Welcome to Daily Office Devotions, where every Monday through Friday we consider some aspect of that day’s Scripture readings, as given in the Book of Common Prayer. I’m Reggie Kidd, and I’m grateful to be with you. On this Thursday in the Season After Pentecost our readings come from Proper 25 of Year 1 in the Daily Office Lectionary.  

“Well, that’s a matter of interpretation!” This phrase has shut down so many discussions about the Bible.  In truth, the Bible does have to be interpreted. It’s important to acknowledge that fact, and then honestly to look for the best interpretation. That quest involves paying close attention to the text and listening to others who have interpreted the text as well (not to mention praying and listening to the Lord!).  

When it comes to the Book of Revelation, I have found myself persuaded by those who see Revelation taking us up to final judgment seven different times, each time building in dramatic intensity. Final judgment, it seems to these interpreters and to me, takes place at 6:12–17; 7:9–17 (after the seven seals), at 11:15,18 (after the seven trumpets), at 14:14,15,18 (after the woman versus the dragon), at 16:17,20 (after the bowls, at 19:11–21 (after Babylon’s fall), and at 20:9b–15 (after Satan’s last campaign).  

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

On several occasions, those cycles begin with a look back on Jesus’s earthly ministry and his inaugural victory over sin and Satan and death. That’s how I understand, for instance, Revelation 12’s description of the child born to the woman and taken up to heaven. It’s also how I understand Revelation 20’s description of Satan being bound (which is what had enabled Jesus to “cast out Satan” in his exorcisms, according to Matthew 12:26–29; Mark 3:23–27. In the parallel passage, Luke says Jesus “overcomes”).  

Though it’s difficult to be dogmatic about it, I think that today’s passage introducing the seven seals also begins with a look back on the earthly ministry of Christ. The “first horseman” has a bow and a crown and comes “conquering and to conquer.” The word is nikein, and is more generally translated “to overcome,” and its connotations in John’s writings are positive more often than not.1 Jesus says, “I have overcome the world” (John 16:33), and his believers are urged to “overcome” (Revelation 2:7,11,17,26; 3:5,12,21; 15:2; 21:7). The Lion of Judah who was slain as a lamb has “overcome” (Revelation 5:5). His initial and inaugural victory over sin and death will culminate in a final “overcoming” of all of God’s and his people’s enemies (Revelation 17:14).  

The horsemen that come with the second, third, and fourth seals depict Satanic pushback—war, famine, and death. During the span of time between Christ’s first coming and his second coming, we will be beset by much misery. Thus, with the fifth seal, we find ourselves crying out “How long?” (Revelation 6:10). “How long” will war, famine, and death impact our lives? “How long” until we experience relief? 

Then there is this amazing response: “…a little longer, until the full number would be complete” (Revelation 6:11). In the immediate context, martyrs are being told that the full number of martyrs must be complete—which doesn’t sound like great news. However, the panorama opens out to show what “the full number” means at a deeper level. For, following the sixth seal just before final judgment (Friday’s reading of the end of Revelation 6 and the beginning of Revelation 7), we view what the true “full number” that the “little longer” of our wait will have produced: a completed Israel (the symbolic 144,000 Jews of Revelation 7:4–8) and an innumerable host of Gentiles (Revelation 7:9–17). It’s what Paul calls “the fullness of Jews” and “the fullness of Gentiles” (Romans 11:12,25).  

The point of the whole book of Revelation is nicely summed up in its first seven chapters. We begin with a vision of the resplendent Christ who loves us and has set us free from our sins by his blood (Revelation 1). We see in Revelation 2 and 3 that he cares intimately for his churches that struggle with persecution from without, and error and faithlessness within. Revelation 4 reminds us that the Creator has not given up on his creation, and Revelation 5 assures us that all of history unfolds in the hands of the victorious Lion/Lamb.  

Here in Revelation 6–7’s first cycle of judgment we are assured that our living between the time of Christ’s initial “overcoming” in his earthly ministry, his death, and resurrection for us—between that time and his return in final victory—we will live with a dual reality. Believers, no less than unbelievers, will live with war, famine, and death.  However, during this symbolically “a little longer,” God will be sovereignly at work through the witness of his martyrs and faithful believers to bring to himself the Israel of his election and the nations who stream in to receive the promises.  

Revelation is a powerful book of hope, a book that urges us to look with compassion on our neighbors who know only the gloom of war, famine, and death. Revelation calls us to invite them to join us in looking up to the Creator, to reach out to the Redeemer, and to allow themselves to be added to the great host of those who will one day greet with joy Christ’s coming in final victory.  

Be blessed this day,  

Reggie Kidd+ 

The Lion of Judah - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Wednesday • 11/1/2023 •
Wednesday of the Twenty-second Week After Pentecost (Proper 25) 

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 119:49-72; Ezra 6:1-22; Revelation 5:1-10; Matthew 13:10-17 

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

Welcome to Daily Office Devotions, where every Monday through Friday we ask how God might direct our lives from that day’s Scripture readings, as given in the Book of Common Prayer. I’m Reggie Kidd, and I’m grateful to be with you. This Wednesday in the Season After Pentecost our readings come from Proper 25 of Year 1 in the Daily Office Lectionary.  

Three intriguing moments in the Bible’s storyline.  

Ezra: Persian aid. In today’s reading, a succession of Persian rulers realize that they have a vested interest in what happens in Jerusalem’s temple. Darius not only confirms Cyrus’s original decree that God’s house in Jerusalem be built. He underwrites the entire project: “…so that they may offer pleasing sacrifices to the God of heaven, and pray for the life of the king and his children” (Ezra 6:10). It’s as though these strangers to the promises of God (see Ephesians 2:12) have overheard whisperings from above. We know, because we know the larger story, that Yahweh had called Israel “to be my treasured possession out of all the peoples. Indeed, the whole earth is mine, but you shall be for me a priestly kingdom and a holy nation” (Exodus 19:5b–6a). At some level, the Persian kings have taken hold of this deep mystery. 

The entire nation of Israel is a priesthood. Priests represent not just themselves. They dare to enter God’s presence, and they do so on behalf of others. Israel’s ministry before the Lord is for the sake of the whole world. Israel’s mission is indeed to offer sacrifices—and ultimately, it turns out, a singular sacrifice—for the whole world, for the life of kings and children not just in Persia in the 5th century BC, but for kings and paupers, elderly and children, of every tribe and tongue, of every time and place.  

Revelation 5: The Lion and the Lamb. And in this precise mystery lies the key to the entire book of Revelation—a mystery that Revelation 5 unlocks. The scroll that tells the destiny of all humanity must be opened. Who is worthy to tell the story of all of us? Judah’s conquering Lion, of course, per the promise made to King David and his line, except with an ironic twist. The Lion conquers by giving himself up as a sacrificial victim: “Then I saw between the throne and the four living creatures and among the elders a Lamb standing as if it had been slaughtered” (Revelation 5:6). 

Image:  Diego Delso, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons 

No one in the modern world has told this tale as memorably as C. S. Lewis in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. The White Witch has imprisoned the fantasy realm of Narnia under a spell of a perpetual winter. She appeals to the justice of a deep magic that demands the death of Edmund, a traitorous child visiting from our world. Aslan, the great Lion of Narnia, negotiates the release of Edmund, at the price of his own slaughter on the altar-like Stone Table. By a deeper and older magic, Aslan’s death destroys the Stone Table, and more. Aslan returns to life, the witch’s magic begins to crumble, and winter starts working backwards.  

The redeemer of our world is Judah’s Lion slain as a Sacrificial Lamb, risen as Christus Victor—Victor over sin, over death, over hell, over everything that could possibly separate us from God. He is worthy to open the scroll. He is worthy to tell the world its true story. He is worthy to reveal to each of us our destiny as beloved children of the great King. What’s more, he makes us—we who come “from every tribe and language and people and nation”—what he has called his people to be, “a kingdom and priests serving our God, and …reign[ing] on earth” (Revelation 5:9,10). Praise be! 

Matthew: Parables and the demand to choose. A note of sadness courses through Jesus’s earthly ministry, and not just sadness because of the necessity of the death he must die in sinners’ place. A deeper sadness, it seems. A grief over the dullness of his contemporaries who fail to grasp who he is as fulfillment of the divine drama that is being played out before them. He has come to end the ongoing exile of Israel (and of the whole world!) in the Babylon of sin and death and hell. The magi from the same region as Ezra’s Persian kings foresaw it at the beginning of Matthew’s narrative (Matthew 2). And Matthew’s account will end with Jesus receiving “all authority in heaven and on earth,” so he can commission his followers to extend his rule to all the nations of the earth (Matthew 28). 

In the unseeing eyes and unhearing ears Jesus encounters, he recognizes the same thing Isaiah had seen and heard when he warned of the coming of the Babylonian Captivity. Isaiah’s call to get right with God had gone largely unheeded. And so it is in Jesus’s day: “With them indeed is fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah that says: ‘You will indeed listen, but never understand, and you will indeed look, but never perceive’” (Matthew 13:14, quoting Isaiah 6:9). People are cutting themselves off from the promises of God, shutting themselves out of the Kingdom of heaven, and consigning themselves to the ongoing hell of separation from God and his good purposes. And it grieves Jesus.  

The function of the parables is to present the challenge to faith. There is no syllogistic path to truth in them. There is, rather, a word picture that we can write ourselves into, or not. In the context of the parables of Matthew 13, I see myself as “good soil” who hears, understands, and bears fruit—or not. I see myself as wheat, or tare; as going for the treasure, or ignoring it; as prizing the pearl of great price, or taking a pass on it; as good fish, or as bycatch. Jesus’s message in the parables: Choose wisely. May it be so for you and for me! 

Be blessed this day,  

Reggie Kidd+  

He Knows and Cares - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Tuesday • 10/31/2023 •
Tuesday of the Twenty-second Week After Pentecost (Proper 25) 

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 45; Ezra 5:1–17; Revelation 4:1–11; Matthew 13:1–9 

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

Welcome to Daily Office Devotions, where every Monday through Friday we draw insights from that day’s Scripture readings, as given in the Book of Common Prayer. I’m Reggie Kidd, and I’m grateful to be with you. This Tuesday in the Season After Pentecost our readings come from Proper 25 of Year 1 in the Daily Office Lectionary.  

“Too much going on,” sighed the man in the checkout line in front of me. He and the cashier had been trading stories about living through the times we are in.  

John, the writer of the book of the Revelation, might have said much the same: “Too much going on.” For his testimony to the gospel, he’s been exiled to the Isle of Patmos off the southwest coast of Asia Minor. Many Jewish people resist the message of Jesus as Messiah because conversion to faith in Christ brings expulsion from the synagogue (John 16:2). Rome has become increasingly hostile. Already in the mid-60s, according to traditional accounts, Nero has had Paul beheaded and Peter crucified; and, according to the Roman historian Tacitus, Nero has used Christians as human torches to light the streets of Rome (Annals 15.44). By the early 2nd century, confessing Christ could bring a death sentence (Pliny, Epistles 10.96). The churches in the western end of Asia Minor who look to John for leadership struggle with persecution from without, and with heresy, lovelessness, indifference, and materialism within.  

By telling John to “write these things,” the Lord provides perspective to John, the churches of his day, and also to believers in our day. The Lord wants John (and us) to know what’s really going on above the fray, in the unseen realm. The Lord’s will is that we find strength to persevere and even to overcome when it feels like there’s “too much going on.”  

Image: Ramon FVelasquez, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons 

After the transcendent and shimmering image of Jesus as “Alpha and Omega” in Revelation 1, the Lord addresses letters to each of seven struggling churches in Revelation 2–3. The Lord knows and cares about what’s going on in the trenches, about the hard places of people’s lives.   

Now, with Chapter 4, the Lord begins to pull back the curtain that, for now at least, separates earth and heaven. He shows John (and us) what’s going on behind the scenes: “…and there in heaven a door stood open!” (Revelation 4:11b). In his vision, John is taken, in the first place, to the throne room, where the Creator of heaven and earth still governs. Here, God the Father sits on a throne in a setting redolent with colors of the rainbow—his symbol that he is both creator and preserver of his good creation (Revelation 4:3). Worship ascends to the Father from all of creation: from wild animal life (the lion), from domesticated creatures (the ox), from the birds of the air (the eagle), and from humanity (the human face—Revelation 4:6b). Twenty-four elders (Israel’s twelve tribes and Jesus’s twelve disciples) represent the full sweep of the biblical story, humanity’s true history and destiny. Each of the twenty-four has his own throne and crown. In humble adoration, each lays his crown at the feet of God.  

Week after week, the struggling church here below accepts the liturgy’s invitation to join this heavenly chorus in their unending song, “Holy, holy, holy, the Lord God the Almighty, who was and is and is to come” (Revelation 4:8b). Their song is our song as well. For when we sing, with them, of the worth of our Lord and God, we re-center our lives around the fact that reality is thicker than what we can perceive with our senses. There’s so much more going on than what is readily apparent to us down here where it feels like “there’s too much going on.”  

“You are worthy, our Lord and God, 
    to receive glory and honor and power, 
for you created all things, 
    and by your will they existed and were created” (Revelation 4:11).  

It’s his good creation—all of it—and he’s not about to abandon it, nor leave us alone in it with “too much going on.” Stay tuned.  

Be blessed this day,  

Reggie Kidd+ 

Yahweh Has Returned - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Monday • 10/30/2023 •
Monday of the Twenty-second Week After Pentecost (Proper 25)  

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 41; Psalm 52; Zechariah 1:7–17; Revelation 1:4–20; Matthew 12:43–50  

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

Welcome to Daily Office Devotions, where every Monday through Friday we explore that day’s Scripture readings, as given in the Book of Common Prayer. I’m Reggie Kidd. Thanks for joining me. This Monday in the Season After Pentecost our readings finds us in Proper 25 of Year 1 in the Daily Office Lectionary.  

Zechariah: Yahweh has returned. According to Ezra’s account, work on the house of God stops for about 17 years due to Samaritan resistance that is reinforced by later Persian rulers (Ezra 4:1–24). Finally, the prophets Haggai and Zechariah rise up and exhort the people to recommence the building regardless of opposition (Ezra 5; Haggai 1:1–2:9).  

During this time, Zechariah brings words both of comfort and of promise to God’s people. Through a vision of a man standing among myrtle trees, Zechariah consoles the people with “gracious and comforting words” (Zechariah 1:13). Though God had used alien nations to discipline his people, God had not planned the level of pain those nations had inflicted—and in his own time and in his own way, he will right that wrong (Zechariah 1:15).  

Image: "Myrtus communis (I)" by Salomé Bielsa is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0  

Yahweh himself is now returning to Jerusalem “with compassion; my house shall be built in it … My cities shall again overflow with prosperity; the LORD will again comfort Zion and again choose Jerusalem” (Zechariah 1:16b,17—and for his departure from Jerusalem during the exile, see Ezekiel 10).   

Eventually, Darius II of Persia supports the resumption of construction (Ezra 6:1–12). It is indeed time for Yahweh’s people to celebrate the Redeeming God of mercy, compassion, and love. And it is time for them to give themselves to the task of rebuilding the temple, the city, the walls … and their lives.  

Matthew: Now that “God is with us.” From Matthew’s point of view, the coming of Jesus as Emmanuel (“God with us”) is even more dramatic and significant than the return of the exiles from Babylon. Today’s passage in Matthew offers a twofold caution to any of us who are tempted to make light of that fact. Jesus’s coming amounts to a sweeping campaign to thrust demonic presence from God’s beloved Land of Promise and from the hearts of his people. But the elimination of an evil spirit demands its replacement by a good spirit, specifically the Holy Spirit.  

When we fail to acknowledge the source of the goodness that has come to our hearts, we become susceptible to even greater wickedness. The kind of specter Scripture would have us avoid is tasting some of the good that the gospel of Christ brings, for instance, a sense of being freely forgiven, but then “deconstructing” and abandoning our faith. We may well find ourselves living in a prison of bitterness, of self-justification, and of the rationalization of all sorts of things we know to be wrong.  

Revelation: Keeping our eyes on Jesus. What the New Testament as a whole and the Book of Revelation in particular would have us keep in view is the portrait of the magnificence and the glory of “Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth” (Revelation 1:5). If we see him for who he truly is, we can more readily let our identity be shaped by and our lives be governed by the fact that he has made us “a kingdom, priests serving his God and Father” (Revelation 1:6).  

Be blessed this day,  

Reggie Kidd+ 

The Strong Man Bound - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Friday • 10/27/2023 •
Friday of the Twenty-first Week After Pentecost (Proper 24) 

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 31; Ezra 3:1–13; 1 Corinthians 16:10–24; Matthew 12:22–32 

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

Welcome to Daily Office Devotions, where every Monday through Friday we bring to our lives that day’s Scripture readings, as given in the Book of Common Prayer. I’m Reggie Kidd, and I’m grateful to be with you this Friday in the Season After Pentecost. We are in Proper 24 of Year 1 of the Daily Office Lectionary.  

Ezra: Joy at the return. God’s people know it’s of first importance to rebuild the altar and lay the foundation of the temple. (They will soon discover the necessity of building the protecting wall around their city. But hurrah for their sense of the priority of worship!) They adorn their celebration with exuberant music. Tears of joy flow, as well as tears that recall the former days. (This rebuilt temple will not have the grandeur of Solomon’s temple.)  

1 Corinthians: Paul calls for courage and love. “[B]e courageous, be strong. Let all that you do be done in love…Greet one another with a holy kiss” (1 Corinthians 16:13b–14,19) 

1. Have courage to live with hope rather than an over-realized eschatology that expects a life of privilege in the “now.”  

1. Let your fellowship be loving, marked by a “holy kiss.”  

1. Establish relationships that are warm with affection, and chaste with respect for godly boundaries.  

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

Matthew: Jesus and the “strong man bound.” At his baptism (Matthew 3), Jesus receives power that enables him to begin to storm hell itself. By resisting the temptations of the devil in the wilderness directly after his baptism (Matthew 4), Jesus “t[ies] up the strong man” (Matthew 12:29b). He strips Satan of his power to deflect God from his plan to seek and save the lost. Then, under the empowerment of the Spirit, Jesus goes about exorcising demons from possessed people, forgiving people their sins, restoring broken limbs, and returning sight to the blind and speech to the voiceless. All this is in promise of the breaking of hell’s dominion by his death and resurrection. It is evidence of his receiving “all authority in heaven and on earth” (Matthew 28:18). And it will encourage his followers on their mission among the nations to make disciples, baptize, and teach a way of life against which “the gates of hell cannot prevail” (Matthew 16:18).  

Jesus soberly says that deliberately to attribute all this amazing, redemptive activity to the forces of darkness would be to commit the final sin of Christopher Marlow’s “accursed Faustus, miserable man, that from thy soul exclud’st the grace of heaven.”  

Be blessed this day,  

Reggie Kidd+ 

Exile and Return - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Thursday • 10/26/2023 •
Thursday of the Twenty-first Week After Pentecost (Proper 24) 

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 37; Ezra 1:1–11; 1 Corinthians 16:1–9; Matthew 12:15–21 

For comments on 1 Corinthians 14:20–42, see the DDD for Year 1, Tuesday of Lent 5  

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

Welcome to Daily Office Devotions, where every Monday through Friday we consider some aspect of that day’s Scripture readings, as given in the Book of Common Prayer. I’m Reggie Kidd, and I’m grateful to be with you. On this Thursday in the Season After Pentecost our readings come from Proper 24 of Year 1 in the Daily Office Lectionary.  

The Bible’s most consistent through-theme is that of “exile and return.” There’s the loss of Eden by our original parents, and our return to Paradise on that future day when earth and heaven will be made new. There’s Israel’s succumbing to slavery in Egypt at the end of the patriarchal age, and their exodus under Moses to freedom in the Promised Land. There’s Israel’s exile in Assyria and Judah’s exile in Babylon at the end of the divided monarchy, and Isaiah’s promised new exodus back to the Promised Land under Ezra and Nehemiah.  

Every story, every novel, every movie that tells of a quest to return home is a retelling of this motif, from Odysseus in Homer’s Odyssey to Shadow, Chance, and Sassy in the movie Homeward Bound. Our waywardness separates us from the God who, in his love, made us for himself. God’s persistent love, tireless faithfulness, and non-negotiable holiness work to win us back—over and over and over again, until his love, faithfulness, and holiness yield a renewed planet and restored fellowship between our Creator and us. “Exile and return” is our story.  

Image: "The Father's Embrace" by Lawrence OP is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 

“Exile and return” in Ezra. Wonderful insights into God’s redeeming heart lie in today’s passage in Ezra. Yahweh “stir[s] up the spirit” of the polytheistic Persian King Cyrus to do enough homage to the one he calls “the LORD (Yahweh) the God of heaven” to return God’s people to their homeland and to call upon them to “rebuild the house of the LORD (Yahweh) the God of Israel—he is the God who is in Jerusalem” (Ezra 1:1,3). It’s an event that Judah’s prophet Isaiah had prophesied (Isaiah 45), and it shows God’s people they should never be surprised to find the Lord working through people who don’t even know that they are in the crosshairs of his unrelenting love.  

This return bears the marks of a “new exodus.” It repeats features of the original exodus. Cyrus’s decrees that Yahweh’s people may “go up” to Jerusalem, using the same verb that Moses had used in Exodus 32 to describe how God had brought Israel up from Egypt (Exodus 32:1,4,7,8,28). And just as the people of Egypt had provided gifts to the Israelites as they left (Exodus 12:35–36), so do the people of Babylon: “All their neighbors aided them with silver vessels, with gold, with goods, with animals, and with valuable gifts, besides all that was freely offered” (Ezra 1:6).  

“Bringing justice to victory” in Matthew. The Bible’s quintessential account of “exile and return” is Jesus Christ’s death and resurrection. Matthew’s gospel portrays Jesus’s death and resurrection as the fulfillment of Isaiah’s vision of God “bringing justice to victory” through his Servant (Matthew 12:20c, quoting Isaiah 42:3). God’s Servant will suffer in his people’s place to bear their iniquities and justify many (per Isaiah 53:11cd). By his rising, Jesus, as God’s servant, will fortify “bruised reeds” and rekindle “smoldering wicks” (Matthew 12:20a,b, quoting Isaiah 42:3).  

The victory of justice through Jesus’s exile into death and his return from the grave will be so complete that his victory will include Gentiles as well as Jews: “And in his name the Gentiles will hope” (Matthew 12:21, quoting Isaiah 42:21). For this reason, Jesus insists that people not trumpet his miracles and identity during his earthly ministry. He is not on a tour of self-promotion. Rather, his mission is one of “exile and return” that he might “bring justice to the Gentiles” (Matthew 12:18).  

1 Corinthians. Of all the early followers of Jesus, it is arguably the apostle Paul who most vividly sees the picture: God’s justifying love in Christ is winning the victory among the Gentiles. In fact, Paul spends much of his third missionary journey taking up a collection from the new Gentile churches for the sake of the financially struggling church back in Jerusalem. His mission is to create a tangible expression of the reunification of the human race that Jesus’s mission of death and resurrection has accomplished. All of humanity “exiled” itself from God’s presence through the disobedience of Adam, and all of humanity is included in the “return” marked by Jesus’s rising from the dead. The Gentile churches are themselves proof of that reunification, and so Paul instructs the believers in Corinth to set aside what they can to aid in that endeavor.   

Praise be that Cyrus responded to the prompting of his spirit by the Spirit of Yahweh. Such a lovely way for God to anticipate his justifying love among the Gentiles! 

Praise be that Jesus remained laser-focused on the mission of giving his life that all of us who are wayward could be brought home, and made straight and strong, vibrant and alive.  

Praise be for generous hearts in Christ’s church who respond to the call to invest in the church as the visible manifestation of God’s plan to bring all of humanity back home from the long exile of sin and death.  

Be blessed this day,  

Reggie Kidd+ 

The Trumpet Shall Sound - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Wednesday • 10/25/2023 •
Wednesday of the Twenty-first Week After Pentecost (Proper 24) 

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 38; Lamentations 2:8–15; 1 Corinthians 15:51–58; Matthew 12:1–14 

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

Welcome to Daily Office Devotions, where every Monday through Friday we ask how God might direct our lives from that day’s Scripture readings, as given in the Book of Common Prayer. I’m Reggie Kidd, and I’m grateful to be with you. This Wednesday in the Season After Pentecost our readings come from Proper 24 of Year 1 in the Daily Office Lectionary.  

Lamentations: God’s people have hit bottom. “Your wound is as deep as the sea. Who can heal you?” asks Jeremiah in his utter grief (Lamentations 2:14). Jeremiah personifies Jerusalem as an adulterous wife who has been exposed and cast aside both by her husband and her paramour. Now, she who was called “the perfection of beauty” is mocked by the nations as perfect only in ruined desolation. She had been called “the joy of all the earth” by virtue of the law that governed her, the wisdom that flowed from her, and the worship that adorned her. Now, it’s all gone. Jerusalem’s kings and princes are in exile. The temple has been leveled, and sacrifice and worship have been cut off. Prophets still speak falsehood, because they refuse to name the sinful idolatry that has been the people’s downfall. And in the streets, mothers offer what comfort they can to the babies starving in their arms.  

For some 70 years or so, Jerusalem and her people will languish thus, while, as Moses and the prophets had forecast, the land will enjoy its sabbath rest from idolatry and lovelessness (Leviticus 26:34; Jeremiah 25:11–12; 29:10–14; 2 Chronicles 36:21).  

As deep as the wound is, however, there is healing. Tomorrow, our Old Testament readings turn the corner with the Persian King Cyrus’s decree calling for the return of Jews to their homeland and for the rebuilding of Yahweh’s house in Jerusalem.  

Although our wounds, like Jerusalem’s, may feel “as deep as the sea,” there is always an affirmative answer to the question, “Who can heal you?” Yes, our Lord can and does.  

Matthew: Jesus is our rest. Yahweh had provided a sabbath framework to shape Israel’s life. Weeks, months, years, and cycles of years were designed to mirror God’s original creative acts (Genesis 1), and to afford humans regular relief and refreshment of body and soul. The expansion of the sabbath principle in the Jubilee year (Leviticus 25) and in Daniel’s prophecies of a great Jubilee at the end of seven cycles of seven years (Daniel 7,9)—these expansions gave promise of a whole new era of sabbath rest that would be inaugurated by the Son of Man when he comes to put an end to sacrifice and establish God’s Kingdom.  

For Matthew, that era has come because the Lord of the Sabbath has come. He has come to take away the sin of his people. And on the way, Jesus imperiously oversteps contemporary extra sabbath requirements that had made the weekly sabbath onerous and burdensome rather than joyful and restorative. And he does so to make the point that he is himself the joy and the restoration which the sabbath had long promised.  

Today’s account of the disciples gleaning in the fields on the sabbath illustrates yesterday’s saying from Jesus: “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28).  

1 Corinthians: the trumpet shall sound. It is helpful, I believe, to think of Jesus as our Sabbath “now-and-not-yet.” Now, in the present, he delivers us from self-justification and from sin’s dominion, by virtue of his cross, resurrection, and indwelling Spirit. At the end of history as we know it, he will draw us from the grave, and deliver us (along with all creation) from death’s cruel grip.  

The sounding of “the last trumpet” in today’s paragraph in 1 Corinthians is the sounding of one final Jubilee shophar (Leviticus 25:8–13), the signaling of our freedom at last from slavery to the corruption of death.  

Every time I come upon it, this passage evokes a welcome and redemptive earworm: the “The Trumpet Shall Sound” from Handel’s Messiah (rendered here by Dashon Burton and Music in the Somerset Hills). It’s an earworm that sustained me throughout my parents’ long descent into dementia, an earworm with promise of what lies on the far side of the withering of their bodies and minds. “The trumpet shall sound….” It’s an earworm that sounds in my head at every funeral I oversee. “The trumpet shall sound….”  It’s an earworm that helps me walk the halls of nursing homes with their strange juxtaposition of frail residents lying alone in rooms outside of which have been lovingly hung box frame collections of pictures of those same residents in their vibrant younger days. “The trumpet shall sound … and we shall be raised incorruptible.”   

Be blessed this day,  

Reggie Kidd+