Jesus Can Get Us All the Way Home - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Tuesday • 10/8/2024 •
Proper 22

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 121; Psalm 122; Psalm 123; Micah 1:1-9; Acts 23:12-24; Luke 7:1-17

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)

Micah. The Daily Office now turns to the ministry of the 8th century BC prophet Micah. Following Hosea’s lead, Micah treats the Northern Kingdom, Israel, as Yahweh’s beloved wife who has prostituted herself to other gods: “…as the wages of a prostitute she has gathered [her wages]” (Micah 1:7). As a result, Israel is bringing destruction upon herself through the imminent Assyrian invasion. Micah, who is from the Southern Kingdom of Judah, sees danger for his own people as well. He accuses his beloved Judah of the same crimes as Israel: “And what is the high place of Judah? Is it not Jerusalem?” (Micah 1:5). Worship, even in the Temple—the legitimate place of worship—has become tainted with idolatry. 

Prophecies in the book of Micah will range from warnings of devastating judgment for both Israel and Judah (1:2-5); to pleas for justice, faithfulness, and humility (6:8); and to promises of rescue by a Bethlehem-born Messiah from the line of David (5:2-5a). 

Image: Image: Abraham Sobkowski OFM, Attribution, via Wikimedia Commons

In Luke’s gospel, we find the Bethlehem-born Son of David accomplishing this very rescue. The Messiah comes in blessing, not only to the Jew, but also to the non-Jew. In today’s reading, Jesus extends God’s love to a Roman centurion and his close-to-death slave (Luke 7:1-10). The centurion’s expression of faith is instructive as well as extraordinary. His message to Jesus is, in essence, “If you say the word, I believe it will be done, without personally needing an audience with you.” If only we could be so confident! We have Christ’s words in Scripture, but we often find it difficult to trust him as we ought.  

Similarly, if ever we wanted to be confident that Jesus identifies with us in our sorrows, we have only to turn to biblical accounts of Jesus responding to the grief of others. When Jesus stood outside the tomb of Lazarus, John, using powerful Greek terms, writes that “…he was greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved” and “Jesus wept” (John 11:33,35). Here in Luke 7, a widow’s only son has died. Her loss is significant, not simply because of her love for her child, but also because, as a widow, devastatingly, her life has changed. She has lost her means of support, and she faces a grim future. When Jesus encounters her in a funeral procession, Luke records, “he had compassion for her,” using a graphic term for the feeling of emotion: splanchnizestai, which means something like “feel deep down in one’s inward parts or bowels.” The young man is brought back to life, and Jesus presents the son back to the mother. We see in Jesus not just empathy in our sorrows, but power to transform them: he can defeat death itself. His power to raise the dead to physical life prefigures his power to raise the believer to eternal life.  Jesus can get us all the way home. 

Acts. In Luke’s companion volume to Luke, we see the heirs of Israel’s and Judah’s covenantally faithless leadership resisting their Messiah. Spiritually dead themselves, they refuse the explanation and offer of spiritual life in Christ, and subsequently concoct a conspiracy to kill the formerly spiritually dead apostle Paul. Nevertheless, the Lord has other plans, and informs Paul that he will be God’s witness—in Rome!  Thus, by some “chance,” a nephew of Paul’s happens to hear of the plot to kill Paul. The young man brings the information to Paul. Paul, who by this time has learned something about the ethical character of the Roman commander, instructs the young man to give the commander the details of the plan.  Hearing of the scheme, the fair-dealing commander springs into action. He issues orders to provide Paul with a military escort out of town, foiling the intentions of the Jews. Jesus is going to get Paul all the way to Rome.

Collect of the Day: Almighty and everlasting God, you are always more ready to hear than we to pray, and to give more than we either desire or deserve: Pour upon us the abundance of your mercy, forgiving us those things of which our conscience is afraid, and giving us those good things for which we are not worthy to ask, except through the merits and mediation of Jesus Christ our Savior; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Be blessed this day, 

Reggie Kidd+

Like an Evergreen Cypress - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Monday • 10/7/2024 •
Monday of Proper 22

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 106:1-18; Hosea 14:1-9; Acts 22:30–23:11; Luke 6:39-49

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)

Today finds me pondering the arresting imagery in Hosea. 

The prophet Hosea has used powerful and penetrating metaphors and similes to communicate Yahweh’s persistent appeals to Israel. Yahweh is an estranged husband who will not be denied (1:2–3:5). He is a disappointed father who will not give up on his child/son (11:1-9). He is like a lion who roars both in wrath (5:14; 13:7) and in love (11:10). 

Image: Vincent van Gogh , Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Likewise, Hosea has used compelling metaphors and similes to characterize his people. Israel is (or is like) a wayward wife (1:2–3:5), a luxuriant vine (10:1), a trained heifer (10:11), a lost child/son (11:1-9), a flock of disoriented birds (8:11-12; 11:11). 

Metaphor transfers the meaning of one thing to another for the sake of comparison (from the Greek metaphorein, meaning “transfer”). Simile likens one thing to another, likewise for the sake of comparison (from the Latin similis, meaning “similar, like”). Metaphor and simile provide the Bible with tools to reshape our perception of reality: “This is that, isn’t it?” or “This is like that, isn’t it?” Hosea wants us to reshape our imaginations—inviting us to “see” Yahweh’s resolute love for us, and our resolute rebelliousness and our squandering of his love. And Hosea wants us to picture how we might answer God’s resolute love by turning from our irresolution in love. 

In the final chapter of the Book of Hosea, the prophet makes one last direct appeal, and then showers us with one last burst of metaphors and similes of his love. It’s really quite beautiful and moving, I think. 

Yahweh’s appeal for repentance — Hosea 14:1-3,8

• Acknowledge that you are the one responsible for your situation — 14:1

• “Take words with you … the fruit of your lips” — i.e., name the specifics and ask for forgiveness — 14:2

• Confess that the true God is your only hope — 14:3,8

Metaphors & similes of God’s amazing promises to “re-Edenize” the world through Israel: “I will be like the dew to Israel…” — Hosea 14:4-7

• “…like the lily” — Yahweh will beautify the ugly.

• “…like the forests of Lebanon” — Yahweh will strengthen the weak.

• “…his shoots shall spread out” — Yahweh will make Israel’s now contracted spiritual heart once again expansive. 

• “…like the olive tree” — Yahweh will make Israel’s now unproductive spiritual life once again the source of spiritual value in the world. 

• “…fragrance like that of Lebanon” — Yahwah will replace the stench of rot exuding from Israel with a delightful aroma. 

• “…live beneath my shadow … flourish as a garden” — Where there is now withered spiritual dryness, Yahweh will create lush and luxuriant spiritual life. 

Hosea offers one last simile for Yahweh and his people: “I am like an evergreen cypress; from me comes your fruit” (Hosea 14:8 RSV). Whether he got it directly from Hosea or not, Vincent Van Gogh was profoundly shaped in his spiritual life by this image. The most memorable line (in my view) of the one sermon that survives from a young Vincent’s short career in ministry is the aspiration he urges upon us: “to be born again … to an evergreen life.” I pray that God’s evergreen life becomes your own.

Be blessed this day, 

Reggie Kidd+

Always Time to Seek the Lord - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Friday • 10/4/2024 •

Friday of Proper 21

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 102; Hosea 10:1-15; Acts 21:37–22:16; Luke 6:12-26

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)

Today’s readings — from Hosea, Luke, and Acts — are a study in the difference between reality and appearance—what German crisply calls the difference between “Sein und Schein.” 

Reality & appearance: Hosea. To all appearances, Israel is flourishing like the “vine” God planted her to be (Hosea 10:1; and see Isaiah 5:1-5; Jeremiah 2:21; Psalm 80:8-11). Since the Garden of Eden, the earth has been devoid of spiritual life. Israel is God’s greenhouse, anticipating the return of Eden. Indeed, to outward appearances, life in the Northern Kingdom is good. Prosperity reigns. Good times roll. Altars (to false gods) and palaces abound. But the royal pomp and religious display in the Northern Kingdom is all show, no go! Because of the rot beneath the surface, God’s garden there is filled with “poisonous weeds” and “thorn and thistle” (Hosea 10:4,8). Words from the courts do not promote God’s justice, and so litigation flourishes “like poisonous weeds.” Worship focuses around golden calves at altars established in northern cities to rival Jerusalem’s temple in the south. And so, ritual there is empty—I think of a phrase that Paul will use centuries later: “having a form of godliness, but denying its power” (2 Timothy 3:5). The golden calves will be carried away as tribute to “the great king” of Assyria:  

The inhabitants of Samaria tremble
    for the calf of Beth-aven [literally, “house of worthlessness,” a mocking pun on Bethel, “house of God”].
Its people shall mourn for it,
    and its idolatrous priests shall wail over it,
    over its glory that has departed from it.

The thing itself [i.e., the golden calf] shall be carried to Assyria
    as tribute to the great king. 
Ephraim shall be put to shame,
    and Israel shall be ashamed of his idol. — Hosea 10:5-6

And where the golden calves once stood, supposedly emblematic of Israel’s identity of abundant life, there will grow “thorn and thistle.” Phony religiosity and sham spirituality will be unmasked.  

Even so, though the exile is inevitable, the call to forsake the illusion always comes: “Sow righteousness; reap steadfast love; break up fallow ground; for it is time to seek the Lord, that he may come and rain righteousness upon you” (Hosea 10:12). It is always time to seek the Lord! There is always, insists Hosea, time to give up appearance for reality. 

Image: Pixabay

Reality & appearance: Luke. To all appearances, the “good life” consists in having money to burn, an ample palate, boundless fun … with everybody thinking you’re amazing. Jesus says otherwise:

Woe to you who are rich,
    for you have received your consolation.
Woe to you who are full now,
    for you will be hungry.
Woe to you who are laughing now,
    for you will mourn and weep. 

Woe to you when all speak well of you…. — Luke 6:24-25

To Jesus “the good life” involves poverty, hunger, weeping … with everybody thinking you’re a “nothing”: 

Blessed are you who are poor,
    for yours is the kingdom of God.
Blessed are you who are hungry now,
    for you will be filled.
Blessed are you who weep now,
    for you will laugh.

Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude you, revile you, and defame you on account of the Son of Man. Rejoice in that day and leap for joy…. — Luke 6:20-22

The reality is that the “good life” consists in a full reckoning with how upside down everything has become since the Garden. Pardon me for putting it this way, but it’s the good news of sin — the way things are isn’t the way things are supposed to be. We saw this truth being expressed over and over again in Ecclesiastes: it isn’t always the case that hard work is rewarded, that good guys always win. The real world isn’t “garbage in, garbage out.” Sometimes the boogerheads get put in charge. Sometimes there’s no adult on the playground. Sometimes we are living the world of The Lord of the Flies. Despite what parents and teachers tell us as kids, people don’t always play by the rules, and cheaters can prosper. “Haves” don’t necessarily deserve what they have; and “have nots” aren’t necessarily at fault for their not having.

Jesus has come to raise the lowly and bring down the exalted: “Every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill be made low” (Isaiah 40:4). He has come to humble the proud and ennoble the humiliated. The Kingdom of God puts the upside-down right side up again. Thus, Jesus calls his people to sacrifice for the impoverished, to share the hunger of the famished, to weep with those who weep…. and, in doing so, to be regarded as “fools for Christ” (1 Corinthians 4:10). 

Reality & appearance: Acts. In today’s passage in Acts, Luke provides the second of three accounts of Paul’s call to follow and serve Christ (Acts 9:1-29; 22:1-21; 26:9-20). In this account, the voice is Paul’s.  He wants his fellow Jews to know that his acceptance of Christ is not the renunciation of his Judaism, but a deeper acceptance of it. That’s why Paul addresses his Jerusalem audience not in the Greek of his letters to the Gentile churches but in Hebrew (probably actually Aramaic). Here Paul embraces the privilege of his birth in Tarsus, “no mean city,” his upbringing in Jerusalem, and his education “at the feet of Gamaliel” (one of the premier teachers of Pharisaic Judaism of the first century). Paul shares his audience’s zeal for God, a zeal that their tradition has taught them. And although he uses his social privilege to identify himself and connect with his fellow Jews, he will later explain (Philippians 3) it is not his fancy background, but knowing Christ, which is the source of his worth. 

Paul’s point is that he has been found by the “Righteous One” who fulfills and embodies that tradition, and for whom that tradition has prepared him and his ministry. Christ has revealed himself to Paul as bringing a holy call from “the God of our ancestors” (Acts 22:14). God is sending Paul on a mission to fulfill the promise to Abraham that Israel would bring blessing to the nations: “for you will be his witness to all the world of what you have seen and heard” (Acts 22:15). 

It’s pretty easy to fool the world with the slick shiny stuff. Golden calves. Riches. Social privilege. Yes, yes, we know that God is not fooled. But, sadly, we ourselves are often fooled. Sometimes we need clear reminders from God’s perspective about the true nature of what lies beneath appearances: his very real anger at injustice and false worship, his true ordering of what constitutes a good life, the true source of a person’s worth.

Be blessed this day, 

Reggie Kidd+

"Take Care..." - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Thursday • 10/3/2024 •

Thursday of Proper 21

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 105:1-22; Hosea 5:8–6:6; Acts 21:27-36; Luke 6:1-11 

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)

Today’s lessons are a study in what is the one great enemy of the human soul. This enemy the writer to the Hebrews names “the deceitfulness of sin” (Hebrews 3:13). 

Sin’s deceitfulness: Hosea. The sin of false worship deceives the Northern Kingdom of Israel as to what threatens her well-being. Her spiritual adultery has brought dire consequences; she thinks she is under threat from outside forces (from Judah, the Southern Kingdom), and so she seeks unholy alliances (with Assyria). But it is chiefly the ferocity of Yahweh’s jealous love that she has brought upon herself: “I will be like a lion to Ephraim … I will tear and go away … I have hewn them by the prophets” (Hosea 5:14; 6:5). 

The answer is really quite simple, if not easy: 

• “steadfast love” (as opposed to a false, temporary “love … like a morning cloud, like the dew that goes away early” — 6:4) …

• “…and not sacrifice” (for though they could barely realize it at the time, one day there will be a Sacrifice that results in “a third day” raising up to life — 6:2), 

• “the knowledge of God” (that is, intimate and exclusive fellowship with their true Husband Yahweh) …

• “…rather than burnt offerings” (“smells and bells” minus heart-devotion stir God’s disgust, not his affections—Hosea 6:6). 

Image: Sebastiano Ricci , Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Sin’s deceitfulness: Luke. In Jesus’s confrontations with the scribes and the Pharisees (Luke 6:2,7) over the significance of the sabbath day, the “deceitfulness of sin” manifests itself in their misunderstanding of the significance of God’s commands generally, and his command to keep the sabbath specifically. David had put the well-being of his companions ahead of the sanctity of the showbread (1Samuel 21:1-6). In doing so, he had embodied the principle that “steadfast love” outweighs “sacrifice.” A thousand years later, Jesus comes as “the Son of Man” to underscore the point. God sympathizes with humans in their suffering. Healing, as he does, on the sabbath, Jesus, “the lord of the sabbath,” embodies the principle that the sabbath is a gift for restoration and healing, not a summons to smug, sanctimonious, spiritual self-promotion. 

Sin’s deceitfulness: Acts. Sin’s deceitfulness is in full force when Paul’s enemies misrepresent him as having violated Jewish scruples about bringing Gentiles into the Temple precincts. Indeed, as far as Paul is concerned, Christ’s sacrifice has destroyed the dividing wall between Jew and Gentile (Ephesians 2:14-16). But out of respect for his countrymen, Paul has honored their principles, leaving the Gentile members of his retinue outside while he enters the Temple. Paul desires to win unbelieving fellow Jews with God’s love, not bludgeon them over their spiritual blindness. Not so long ago he himself had not been able to figure out that God’s Messiah had come in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus had had to appear to him personally. Now he is committed simply to telling and showing the good news, letting Christ do the convincing. Sin’s deceitfulness can be taken away by the Lord—it really can, but only by the Lord. Paul knows that. And so should we. 

A fitting conclusion for our meditation on these passages is the urging from Hebrews: “Take care, brothers and sisters, that none of you may have an evil, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God. But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called “today,” so that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin”—Hebrews 3:12-13. 

Be blessed this day,

Reggie Kidd+

An Insult Overlooked - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Wednesday • 10/2/2024 •

Wednesday of Proper 21

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 101; Psalm 109:1-4(5-19)20-30; Hosea 4:11-19; Acts 21:15-26; Luke 5:27-39

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)

Three phrases jump out at me this morning: one from Hosea, one from Luke, and one from Acts. 

For a spirit of whoredom has led them astray… — Hosea 4:12. King Solomon’s heart had been divided. So many wives! So many concubines! So many different gods being worshiped under his roof! (See 1 Kings 11:1-8). His divided heart was followed in the next generation by a divided kingdom. The 10 northern tribes became the nation of Israel. The problem for the Northern Kingdom was that God had commanded that worship was to be centered in a single place (Deuteronomy 12), which became Jerusalem, now lying in the rival Southern Kingdom of Judah (the home of the tribes of Judah and Benjamin). In order to distinguish itself from the Southern Kingdom of Judah, the Northern Kingdom of Israel established its own centers of worship: Bethel and Dan. Further, the informal idolatry that Solomon had tacitly allowed into his expansive household became institutionalized in the Northern Kingdom. Israel built altars to compete with the one in Jerusalem. Israel adorned them with images that looked a lot like the golden calves from the Book of Exodus (1 Kings 12:26-33). And Israel blended worship of Yahweh with worship of old fertility gods of Canaan, the Baals and the Asherahs. By the time Hosea rises as a prophet, this is the way things have been for a couple of centuries. It’s assumed in the Northern Kingdom that you can combine worship of Yahweh with veneration of local deities, and that loyalty to the covenant is consistent with “sexual orgies” and “love of lewdness” (Hosea 4:19). 

Of their idolatry and immorality Hosea says, “A wind has wrapped them in its wings” (Hosea 4:19). We might describe idolatry and immorality as simply having become “the air they breathe.” 

I can’t get past Hosea’s sobering words without pausing to reflect on whether there are idolatrous impulses and immoral compulsions that are part of the air we breathe, a way of being that we take perfectly for granted. I’m not pointing fingers. I’m not launching into a tirade about this sin or that. I’m simply suggesting a pause for reflection here at the beginning of the day. 

“…while the bridegroom is with them…” — Luke 5:27-39. The good news is that God didn’t leave us to pull ourselves out of the morass. He knows we can’t! He didn’t expect us to beautify ourselves, to clean ourselves up, and to make ourselves worthy of him. He knows we can’t! The good news, says the gospel of Luke, is that the Bridegroom that Hosea promised has come. He has come as both Bridegroom and Physician, “to call not the righteous but sinners to repentance” (Luke 5:32). As a result, the expected gloominess of repentance, says Jesus, is misplaced. Christ’s presence is a time for celebration, for joy—the Bridegroom has come, bringing a banquet of love! The restoration of the marriage of heaven and earth on the far side of judgment that Hosea had promised is freely offered in Jesus’s life and ministry. Bring out the new wine! 

You see, brother…” — Acts 21:20. The impact of the Groom’s coming was felt no stronger than by Luke’s traveling companion, the apostle Paul. To the Ephesians (whom we read him addressing in Acts 20) Paul will later write that Christ is Groom to the Church as the Church is Bride to Christ (Ephesians 5). To give concrete expression to the revelation of God’s love in Christ, Paul has spent the last year and a half collecting funds from the Gentile churches as a gift for the Jerusalem believers—those most skeptical of his ministry (about which Paul writes at some length in 2 Corinthians 8-9). 

What is captured for us in today’s reading in Acts is the moment when Paul would have presented his gift to the Jerusalem church. We know that the gift is on his mind from what he says about it later (see Acts 24:17a). What is striking—indeed, breathtaking—is that the moment of the gift-giving is actually passed over in silence. The leaders of the Jerusalem church welcome Paul, listen to his account of what God has been doing among the Gentiles, and praise God for it (Acts 21:17-20a). Then, instead of thanking him for the not insignificant gift that would have accompanied the narrative, they ask him to go “a second mile.” Thus, “You see, brother….” Paul is expected to underwrite sacrifices in the Temple to refute charges that he is encouraging Jewish Christians to abandon Jewish practice. It’s stunning that there is no protest on his part, either of how odd it is to continue to participate in Temple sacrifices now that Christ has made his own once-for-all offering, nor of how they might have at least said, “Thanks, Paul, for this amazing expression of love you bring from the Gentile churches.” 

That Paul accommodates the Jerusalem church’s leadership, and that he does so ungrudgingly, can be accounted for by one thing, and one thing only: he cannot do anything but love the Bride with the same patience, generosity of Spirit, and graciousness that the Groom has extended to him. I pray that your life and mine may be marked with the Groom’s love for the Bride he cherishes and champions. 

Be blessed this day,

Reggie Kidd+

Tied to the Destiny of God's Image Bearers - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Tuesday • 10/1/2024 •

Tuesday of Proper 21

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 97; Psalm 99; Hosea 4:1-10; Acts 21:1-14; Luke 5:12-26

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)

Yesterday, we read the prophet Hosea’s promise that Yahweh will restore his marriage to his people in a “re-Edenized” creation. Today, however, Yahweh indicts his people for violating their marriage vows to the Lord. He points to the misery that Israel’s faithlessness has brought upon herself and upon creation. Faithfulness and loyalty have given way to swearing, lying, murder, stealing, and adultery: “bloodshed follows bloodshed” (Hosea 4:1-2). And because the destiny of all the rest of creation is tied to the destiny of God’s image bearers, the effects are felt in creation as well: “Therefore the land mourns … together with the wild animals, and the birds of the air, even the fish of the sea” (Hosea 4:3). Israel’s life is supposed to anticipate God’s reunification of heaven and earth, and his reestablishment of shalom on the earth. Instead, her life manifests the great divorce between heaven and earth, and the brokenness of life on the earth without God. 

Image: Nikolay Bogatov , Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge; because you have rejected knowledge, I reject you from being a priest to me. — Hosea 4:6. To me personally, the most sobering part of Hosea’s indictment is the charge he brings against Israel’s priests. It’s their responsibility to teach people, to model what life in covenant with Yahweh looks like. They are the ones who are to hold before people the vision of the marriage of heaven and earth. It is to mirror piety in their own lives. It expresses an embracing of, and immersion in, “the law of your God” (Hosea 4:6). It echoes living and teaching as though, as the apostle Paul says, nothing matters but “keeping the commandments of God” (1 Corinthians 7:19). In a word, it displays the duality of simultaneously standing “on” and “under” the Word of God as authority.  

When unbelief takes hold in the hearts of those charged with promoting belief, no good thing follows. I’ve seen that. Pulpits become platforms for personal and political agendas. “The way I read it” replaces “Thus says the Lord.” “What the Bible should have said” displaces “The Bible says.” People are taught to read Scripture (if they are taught to read it at all) through the lens of skepticism, suspicion, radical doubt, and readiness to correct. Claims to unmask hidden biases in the Bible mask hidden biases in the interpreter. As Peter puts it bluntly, when he denounces false teachers who “speak bombastic nonsense, and [who] with licentious desires of the flesh … entice people … They promise them freedom, but they themselves are slaves of corruption” (2 Peter 2:18-19). Or as Hosea puts it in today’s passage: “They feed on the sin of my people; they are greedy for their iniquity” (Hosea 4:8). 

Inevitably, then, as Hosea says, “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge.” Doubt begets doubt, skepticism begets skepticism, a critical spirit begets a critical spirit. A church that is supposed to promote Jesus Christ and his Kingdom promotes anything else, whether it’s one group’s mindset of greed (“how Jesus can make you rich”) or another’s platform of envy (“how Jesus wants you to take away their riches”). 

In the Christian calendar, we are in the orb of the Feast of Saint Michael and All Angels. It is a time to praise God for the heavenly powers he uses to defend and protect his people—from Michael the Archangel, the “protector” of God’s people in the Book of Daniel (12:1), to the angels who stand guard over the seven churches in the Book of Revelation (chapters 2-3). It is a good day to call upon the Lord to bolster heaven’s armies for the bringing of fresh strength and new resolve to his servants on the earth. Especially in order that servants of the church may “feel a divine jealousy [for Christ’s church], … promised … in marriage to one husband, to present [her] as a chaste virgin to Christ” (2 Corinthians 11:2). 

Collect of St. Michael and All Angels 

Everlasting God, who have ordained and constituted in a wonderful order the ministries of angels and mortals: Mercifully grant that, as your holy angels always serve and worship you in heaven, so by your appointment they may help and defend us here on earth; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Be blessed this day. 

Reggie Kidd+

Let Down Your Nets for a Catch - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Monday • 9/30/2024 •

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 89:1-18; Hosea 2:14-23; Acts 20:18-38; Luke 5:1-11

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)

Brief observations today from each of the readings: in Hosea 2, Acts 20, and Luke 5. 

Hosea. The Northern Kingdom of Israel has been enjoying decades of peace and prosperity. Unfortunately, these have also been decades of idolatry, immorality, and injustice. The prophet Hosea’s mission is to warn Israel that the days of “good times” are coming to an end, that the nation will be consigned to a horrible exile—but that the Lord will never stop loving his wayward people, and that in the end he will woo and win them back to himself. 

Hosea’s mission is to embody the Lord’s message by imitating the relationship between God and his people. In these first two chapters of his book, Hosea is told to marry a prostitute, Gomer, and then to name her children “Scattered,” “Not Pitied,” and “Not My People” (Hosea 1:6-8). Once she—as she inevitably will—leaves him, Hosea is to go after her, and to redeem her out of the new, bad marriage into which she will have given herself. Then he is to rename her children “God sows,” “Pitied,” and “My People” (Hosea 2:22-23). 

The Lord presents the restoration of the marriage of Hosea and Gomer as a parable of the way that he will re-establish his covenant with Israel on the far side of his judgment and Israel’s exile to, and enslavement in, Assyria. That day will be so wonderful it will be like a second exodus: “She shall respond as in the days of her youth, as at the time when she came out of the land of Egypt” (Hosea 2:15). She will no longer be married to the false gods (“Baal” means master-husband). Instead, she will be married once again to Yahweh: “I will take you for my wife in faithfulness, and you shall know the Lord” (Hosea 2:20). Let it be noted, by the way, that this “knowing” is one of intimate amore. And it will take place on an earth that will have been “re-Edenized.” His people will be a new “Eve” on a “new earth” where harmony will have been restored between humans and the animal kingdom; where “the bow, the sword, and war” will have been abolished from the land; and where the earth will “answer the grain, the wine, and the oil” (Hosea 2:18,22). 

With the coming of Christ, whom the apostle Paul calls the “Second Adam,” the human story has taken a giant step towards that re-Edenized creation. The Groom has come for his Bride; he has paid the price to win her from her bad marriage to the law, sin, and death (Romans 7:1-6). The Groom has done so in order that he may, even in the now, be wed to his Bride the Church, and “that we may bear fruit to God” (Romans 7:4). Think about that! And he will come once again for final consummation, to bring her to the banqueting table, the Marriage Feast of the Lamb (Revelation 19:6-10). 

In the meantime, our reading in Acts gives indications of what the fruitfulness of our present wedding to our Groom looks like. 

Image: Pixabay

Acts. Paul’s speech to the Ephesian elders shows the humility, emotional investment, and loving endurance that Christ’s love prompts: “You know how I lived the whole time I was with you, from the first day I came into the province of Asia. I served the Lord with great humility and with tears and in the midst of severe testing by the plots of my Jewish opponents” (Acts 20:19-20). Paul’s speech bespeaks the determination to see through to a good end one’s life calling: “However, I consider my life worth nothing to me; my only aim is to finish the race and complete the task the Lord Jesus has given me—the task of testifying to the good news of God’s grace” (v. 24). His speech demonstrates a loving regard for the well-being of those under his care: “Keep watch over yourselves and all the flock of which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers. Be shepherds of the church of God, which he bought with his own blood...In everything I did, I showed you that by this kind of hard work we must help the weak, remembering the words the Lord Jesus himself said: ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.’” (v. 29, 36).  More than anything else, perhaps, Paul’s speech puts on display the deep-seated love that the Groom plants in the hearts of those who know what it is to be loved deeply and intimately by him: “There was much weeping among them all [at Paul’s departure]; they embraced Paul and kissed him….” (v. 37).

Luke. Peter’s experience of nets bursting with fish provides incentive to be attentive for, and ready to respond to, the Master’s voice. And it means, perhaps, being ready to respond even when it doesn’t seem to make sense. You get the feeling that Peter almost did an eye-roll when Jesus told him to put out his nets: “Master, we have worked all night long but have caught nothing” (v.6). He adds (I paraphrase), “…but if you insist….” Peter is very surprised by the result of listening to Jesus and following his instructions. This incident can be instructive for us. When we hear his call, we might want to trust him and follow. 

You never know when he’s going to say, “Let down your nets for a catch.” 

Be blessed this day, 

Reggie Kidd+

A Cleansed Heart, A Good Conscience, A Sincere Faith - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Friday • 9/27/2024 •

Today’s is the tenth of ten devotionals that treat Paul’s last three letters — those to his ministry proteges, Timothy and Titus. Last week, in the first three devotionals on the so-called Pastoral Epistles, 1 & 2 Timothy and Titus, we saw how God overcomes our lack of faith, hope, and love. Following those three meditations are four devotionals in which we show how God implants in us basic ingredients of human flourishing, what are often called the classical “cardinal virtues”: godliness and temperance (which we treated last Thursday and Friday), and justice and courage (which we treated Monday and Tuesday of this week). Finally, in these last three devotionals of this special series on the Pastorals, we see how Paul inspires us to faith, hope, and love.

We close this series on the Pastoral Epistles where we started: with faith, hope, and love. These three are often called the “theological virtues.” And today we focus on love. 

I went to a seminary that was dedicated to the restoration of the integrity, understandability, and applicability of the Bible in the face of its critics, demythologizers, and revisionist (heterodox at best and heretical at worst) interpreters. I personally was there, recently graduated from college with a degree in sociology, hoping also to build a theological base so I could help the church hammer out a political and social theology. We were there to learn how to fix things — all, or most of us, to correct the church of its errors; I was there, in addition, to learn how to bring Christ’s voice to the corridors of power. 

One of the most dramatic moments in seminary, at least for me, took place in my first days there. It was a chapel talk delivered by Professor John Frame, of whom I had never heard, but who was to shape my head and heart like no other theologian. Professor Frame’s text that day was 1 Timothy 1:3–7 (I don’t remember the translation he used, but many of us back then used the NASB):

Just as I urged you upon my departure for Macedonia, to remain on at Ephesus so that you would instruct certain people not to teach strange doctrines (heterodidaskalein), 4 nor to pay attention to myths and endless genealogies, which give rise to useless speculation rather than advance the plan of God, which is by faith, so I urge you now.

5 But the goal of our instruction is love from a pure heart, from a good conscience, and from a sincere faith. 6 Some people have strayed from these things and have turned aside to fruitless discussion, 7 wanting to be teachers of the Law, even though they do not understand either what they are saying or the matters about which they make confident assertions.

The gist of Professor Frame’s message (as best I can recall decades after the fact) was this: Yes, we need to counter the teachers of strange doctrines and the demythologizers who compromise the truth of the gospel by dismissing its straightforward story of God redeeming lost sinners through Christ. Yes, in the corridors of power and in the halls of legislature, we need to be ambassadors of that God whose Word still governs the universe, and who has reconciled the world — and all things — to himself in Christ. 

But all of that is so much “blowing in the wind” without love. We dare not attempt to confront error and speak truth to power without keeping central this one thing: love. In 1 Corinthians 13, Paul explores love’s many-splendored manifestations. Here in 1 Timothy 1:5, Paul stresses three things that make it deeply existential. 

1 — Love that comes from a cleansed heart. We think and live according to “what the heart wants” (to return to a Thomas Cranmer and Ashley Null observation from last Wednesday). When we reckon with the reality of what’s in our hearts, we are forced to agree with Jeremiah, that “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?” (Jeremiah 17:9). 

It was precisely for a cleansed heart that David prayed when repenting of his sin against Bathsheba and Uriah, and preeminently against Yahweh: “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me” (Psalm 51:10). Which is why even now we begin worship: “Cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of your Spirit, that we may perfectly love you and worthily magnify your Holy Name.” 

Love that comes from a cleansed heart keeps short accounts with God. Love that comes from a cleansed heart confesses frequently and repents deeply. 

2 — Love that comes from a good conscience. We are fallen people living in a fallen world. It’s easy for us to lose perspective on our lives. It’s easy to become confused about what and why and how we are doing what we are doing. Our conscience is our “co-knower” (Latin: con+scientia; Greek: sun+oida). It is a fantastic capacity God has given us to stand outside ourselves and assess what we are doing. God gives us this “co-knower” to remind us that the ends do not justify the means and that it’s important to do what we do in a godly, just, temperate, and courageous way — to be ruled always by faith, hope, and above all by love. As Francis Schaeffer used to say: “We are called to do God’s work in God’s way.” 

Once, a Christian friend felt he had been lied about by another Christian, and that it had cost my friend his job. He went to the person he thought had gotten him wrongly fired. The frank response was: “You, sir, are on the wrong side of a culture war. And in a wartime ethic, normal rules don’t apply.” 

That’s horrifying in any setting, though it happens all around us. In fact, Paul tells the Ephesians they are surrounded by worldly people whose hearts are hardened and calloused so that they have no moral compass (see Ephesians 4:17–19). But among Christians? Really?! Alas, as Paul warns Timothy ministering in that same Ephesus, as shocking as it is, it is possible for apparent believers to let their consciences become seared (literally, “cauterized”), letting themselves become insensate to the difference between right and wrong, truth and falsity (1 Timothy 4:2). 

When Paul says love comes from a good conscience, he means that love makes sure our ends and our means line up. My friend’s accuser should have been ashamed of himself — that’s conscience’s job! The kingdom of God consists of “justice, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit,” not in cheating, dissembling, and rule-bending. Love “rejoices in the truth” (1 Corinthians 13:6b). 

Image: Winston110063002, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

3 — Love that comes from sincere faith. A more literal (and I suggest more accurate) translation is to be found in the Revised Geneva Translation: “faith without hypocrisy” (ek…pisteōs anupokritou). Borrowing a mental picture from the world of drama, Paul means that love flows from a faith that doesn’t carry an array of masks that it can change to fit the character it is playing. There’s not one identity that I take on as a “Christian,” another as a Republican or a Democrat. There’s not one identity I take on as a citizen of the Kingdom of God, and another as a flag-waver or a flag-burner, as a member of this movement or that movement. It all must flow out of, and be subject to correction, by my singular identity as a follower of Christ. 

There are many elements that go into my formation as a person: my genes, the story of my family of origin, my ZIP code. But a “faith without hypocrisy” puts that all up for grabs for one fundamental shaping self-identifier: “I belong — body and soul, mind and emotion, in life and in death — to my Lord Jesus Christ.” 

May we contend well, then, for that which is true. May we work well for that which is just. And in it all, may the love of Christ purify our hearts, shape our consciences, and keep our faith mask-free.  

Be blessed this day, 

Reggie Kidd+

Christ Our Hope Urges Us On - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Thursday • 9/26/2024 •

Today’s is the ninth of ten devotionals that treat Paul’s last three letters — those to his ministry proteges, Timothy and Titus. Last week, in the first three devotionals on the so-called Pastoral Epistles, 1 & 2 Timothy and Titus, we saw how God overcomes our lack of faith, hope, and love. Following those three meditations are four devotionals in which we show how God implants in us basic ingredients of human flourishing, what are often called the classical “cardinal virtues”: godliness and temperance (which we treated last Thursday and Friday), and justice and courage (which we treated Monday and Tuesday of this week). Finally, in these last three devotionals of this special series on the Pastorals, we see how Paul inspires us to faith, hope, and love. 

We close this series on the Pastoral Epistles where we started: with faith, hope, and love. These three are often called the “theological virtues.” And today we focus on hope. 

These days, hope seems like a fool’s notion. Words from W. H. Auden’s poem, For the Time Being: A Christmas Oratorio, ring true: “Nothing can save us that is possible, we who must die demand a miracle.” 

Imager: from "Clayton Moore as 'The Lone Ranger' on 1949 TV series" by Movie-Fan is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.

Indeed, “nothing can save us that is possible.” The reality of this world mocks the classical “cardinal virtues” and their portrait of the good and noble life. There’s no salvation there. Amid our communication revolution, wisdom and truth are drowned in an ocean of mis- and disinformation. Argue for Paul’s “good religion” (eusebeia) — only to find yourself contending against a spirit of Lone Ranger spiritualism, custom-designed Christs, and well-deserved suspicion of organized religion and the institutionalized church. 

Seek to advance justice — only to get dragged into irresolvable disputes over whose definition of justice is in play, that of libertarians or that of communitarians? All along fearing that self-interest is in the driver’s seat in most people’s definition of what is right and what is wrong. 

Argue that in a world that puts before us an infinity of choices, the first choice is to decide to curb our appetites — only to invite stares of incredulity and eyerolls that silently accuse: “What a prude!” Sociologist Peter Berger says we live with a “heretical imperative,” the demand that every value be chosen, not prescribed or given or assumed. It’s an imperative that says the only real heresy is self-limitation. It’s an imperative that scoffs at the suggestion that many of our social problems would dissipate if we tamed our lust and greed and ambition. 

But … the miracle did happen. Nonetheless, into a world not altogether different from ours, Auden maintains, the miracle that his characters demand did transpire. Indeed, the miracle became incarnate. Hope was born on Christmas Day and hope was confirmed on Easter morning. The characters in Auden’s poem recognize the shattering (Tolkien would call it “eucatastrophic”) wonder of what is happening to them and to their world through the birth of the Christ Child: 

Our sullen wish to go back to the womb, to have no past, no future, is refused … Tonight for the first time the prison gates have opened. Music and sudden light have interrupted our routine tonight and swept the filth of habit from our hearts. O here and now our endless journey starts.*

We live, therefore, in Auden’s “For the Time Being” — that period between the two great “appearings” (epiphaneiai) of God’s miracle. As Paul notes, Christ “appeared” in humility to redeem us (Titus 2:11; 3:4; 2 Timothy 1:10) and Christ “will appear” in glory to consummate all things (Titus 2:13; 1 Timothy 6:14; 2 Timothy 4:1,8).  

And so, we can note the hopefulness with which the apostle faces the prospect of martyrdom in 2 Timothy 4:1–8. He knows that God, “the judge of the living and the dead” will execute perfect justice in his own time and in his own way (verse 1). 

Meanwhile, knowing that hard times are ahead (verse 3), Paul urges the things that make for “good religion” — he wants the legacy he leaves to be one of heralding the gospel, convincing, rebuking, encouraging, and teaching — and these things “with all patience” (verse 2). 

And he models for Timothy a perspective of courage and self-mastery as he faces his own end with equilibrium: 

• a sense of completion and contentment (“I have fought the good fight; I have finished the race”), 

• a sense of having grown in his own faith (compare his former “I acted in faithlessness” with his final “I have kept the faith” — 1 Timothy 1:13b; 2 Timothy 4:7c), and 

• a hopefulness that death will yield to glory (“there is reserved for me the crown of righteousness” (2 Timothy 4:8a). 

Friends, we can resolve to let Christ-our-Hope urge us on to courage and to resolve in our own promotion of “good religion,” justice, and self-control. Because, despite everything we see around us that could bring despair, Paul boldly asserts the same crown of righteousness is reserved “not only to me but also to all who have longed for his appearing” (2 Timothy 4:8c). 

Be blessed this day, 

Reggie Kidd+

* I have taken the liberty of collapsing lines from various characters in Auden’s oratorio: chiefly shepherds and wise men. 

Enabled to Reach for the Stars - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Wednesday • 9/25/2024 •

Today’s is the eighth of ten devotionals that treat Paul’s last three letters — those to his ministry proteges, Timothy and Titus. Last week, in the first three devotionals on the so-called Pastoral Epistles, 1 & 2 Timothy and Titus, we saw how God overcomes our lack of faith, hope, and love. Following those three meditations are four devotionals in which we show how God implants in us basic ingredients of human flourishing: godliness and temperance (which we treated last Thursday and Friday), and justice and courage (which we treated the past two days). Finally, in these last three devotionals of this special series on the Pastorals, we will see how Paul inspires us to faith, hope, and love.

We close this series on the Pastoral Epistles, then, where we started: with faith, hope, and love. These three are often called the “theological virtues.” Here is perhaps the place to acknowledge my debt to the medieval Italian poet Dante for the structuring of these ten meditations. 

Image: "reaching for stars" by almostsummersky is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0.

The outline I’ve adopted mirrors Dante’s journey through heaven in his third volume of the Divine Comedy: the Paradiso. As he moves up through the planetary spheres, Dante sees bad faith (the Moon), misplaced hope (Mercury), and disordered love (Venus) being repaired by Christ. Next he goes through planets where Christ teaches his followers how to live up to the classical world’s four “cardinal virtues”: making us teachers of true Truth (the Sun), courageous warriors (Mars), just rulers (Jupiter), and masters of our appetites (Saturn). 

Finally, Dante shows both the integration of the theological and the cardinal virtues, as well as the primacy of the theological virtues. He does so by climaxing the pilgrim’s journey through the heavenly spheres with examinations on faith (by Peter, bearer of the keys of the Kingdom), on hope (by James, counselor to patience in suffering), and on love (by John the beloved disciple). Dante’s point, I think, is that Christ has come to ennoble human aspirations to the good life (wisdom, courage, justice, and temperance), but only through a redemption that begins and ends with faith, hope, and love. 

What makes the Pastoral Epistles so very special in the canon of Christian Scripture is the unique way Paul, the author of the three “theological virtues,” takes account of the four “cardinal virtues” of the classical and Hellenistic world. He claims them for Christ,  and incorporates them into a Christian vision of a good and noble life. 

Faith grounds us and gives us wings. Early in this final section of the Paradiso Dante muses over the irony of faith grounding us in reality by inviting us to believe in unseen things. Following the Latin translation of Hebrews 11:6, “Faith,” observes Dante, “is the substantia (that which “stands under” [sub + stare]) of things hoped for” (Paradiso 24.64). For our lives to mean anything, all of us believe in more than what we see — from the force of gravity, to the sun’s rising and setting; from the validity of principles of right and wrong, to the veracity of stories about our ancestors. The key to life is basing our lives on the right unseen realities. 

And faith in those unseen verities gives our lives wings. Interestingly, all three of the main books of the Divine Comedy, the Inferno, the Purgatorio and the Paradiso, end with the word “stars.” Faith lets you stand upon those things that are beneath the surface of things. And when you take your stand on them, then you can hope for things above — faith enables you to reach for the stars. 

In the Pastorals, faith enables us to reach for the stars. People on the island of Crete had an ancient belief that Zeus had originally been a human who ascended to deity by his righteous deeds. They were raised to believe that they too could live such virtuous lives that they could become gods themselves. If they reached for the stars in their mastery of themselves, in their practice of justice with other human beings, and if they did right by the gods — if they did so, they could become like Zeus. Their basic religious spirit amounted to something like an anticipation of Mormonism, the byline of which is: “What we are now the Father once was, and what the Father now is we shall become.” 

Cretans’ upside-down faith won them the mockery of non-Cretan Greeks, and the self-critical remark of “one of their own prophets”: “Cretans are always liars, vicious beasts, lazy gluttons” (Titus 1:12). The temptation for Cretans was to view Christ the way the 20th century novelist Nikos Kazantzakis, himself from Crete, was to envision him: as a man who rose to divinity by self-mastery, righteous living, and pleasing of the divine. 

Such “faith” would be entirely misplaced. Such reaching for the stars would fall far short. To counter such ideas and to encourage a faith that would ennoble us rather than finally degrade us, Paul pointed to Christ as not a man who had ascended to deity. Paul portrayed Christ for the Cretans rather as God’s very own attributes descended to us: “For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all, training us … to live lives that are self-controlled, upright, and godly” … and … “But when the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of any works of righteousness that we had done, but according to his mercy…” (Titus 2:11,12b; 3:4–5a).  

If, by God’s grace and by the Holy Spirit’s work within us, we humbly set aside our pride and humbly accept this Christ — the Christ who has come down to us — we can indeed reach for and attain the stars. 

In the Pastorals, faith grounds us. People from Ephesus had been shaped by a religious spirit opposite that of the people of Crete. They had been taught, not that people rise to deity, but that deity had come down to them … in the form of a lifeless rock. 

As a result, they prostrated themselves before things that degraded and belittled them. One of the smaller deities in Ephesus was Priapus, the god of the phallus. Ephesians were susceptible to sorcery and witchcraft (Acts 19:18–19). Paul feared they would worship their wealth: “As for those who in the present age are rich, command them not to … set their hopes on the uncertainty of riches” (1 Timothy 6:17a,c). And Paul was shocked that they were attracted to demonically-inspired, anti-humanistic, and slothful “disciplines”: dietary restrictions and renunciation of marriage and of domestic responsibility (1 Timothy 4:1–5). 

Paul counters the life-denying religious spirit of Ephesus by pointing to the vibrant humanity of Christ: “[T]here is only one mediator between God and humanity, himself a human being, Christ Jesus…” (1 Timothy 2:5b NJB). God grounds our lives in the one true human being, who mediates his life to us and makes us over into new people. 

That’s why Paul encourages Timothy to punch above his weight: not letting others intimidate him because of his age, not letting his own physical afflictions get the better of him (“take a little wine for your stomach” — 1 Timothy 5:23), rekindling the gift he had received at the laying on of hands by Paul and others, being courageous. In this posture of strength, Timothy will be able to model the “new self” which Paul had already taught in Ephesians 4 and 5, and into which God is forming his whole church. 

The faith that Paul encourages in all his letters, culminating in his counsel to Timothy and Titus, is extraordinary. 

We are called to have faith in the Christ who has brought heaven’s life down to us. He does so, as he taught the Cretans, by embodying God’s communicable attributes. He breaks us of a pride that we can build some sort of stairway to heaven, but then he lifts us up by imparting the very attributes of God — his own grace, kindness, and loving kindness — so that we can live heaven’s life in the here and now, and reach for and ultimately attain the stars. 

At one and the same time, we are called to have faith in the Christ who has down to us not as a dumb, lifeless, and life-denying rock. He has come not to make us subject to desires we cannot control — like lust and greed and occultism. He has come to ground us in our full humanity, molding us into new people, fully embracing our calling as men and women, full of life and of love. 

Be blessed this day, 

Reggie Kidd+ 

When God Hands You the Ball - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Tuesday • 9/24/2024 •

Today’s is the seventh of ten devotionals that treat Paul’s last three letters — those to his ministry proteges, Timothy and Titus. Last week, in the first three devotionals on the so-called Pastoral Epistles, 1 & 2 Timothy and Titus, we saw how God overcomes our lack of faith, hope, and love. Following those three meditations are four devotionals in which we show how God implants in us basic ingredients of human flourishing: godliness and temperance (which we treated last Thursday and Friday), and justice and courage (which we treat yesterday and today). Finally, in the last three devotionals of this special series on the Pastorals, we will see how Paul inspires us to faith, hope, and love. 

The word of the day is “courage.” When commentator Martin Dibelius came upon Titus 2’s claim that “Grace” (i.e., Christ) had come to teach us to live with self-control, justly, and in godly fashion (which, in these devotionals, we have have recast as living according to “good religion”), he noted with some surprise that these letters are engaging three of the basic virtues of Greek and Roman ethics. The Hellenistic ethical canon included a fourth virtue, “Courage.” And courage is what Paul takes up in 2 Timothy.

Image: Adaptation, "City Island Little League ASG 071" by Edwin Martinez1 is licensed under CC BY 2.0. 

“Either carrying it, or on it!” According to the Roman historian Plutarch, Spartan mothers sent their sons off to war with a pithy saying. Pointing to their sons’ shields, they’d intone: “Either carrying it, or on it” (Spartan Sayings 241.F.5). Let me give you my amplified version: “Son, I’ll know you fought bravely if you come home alive, carrying your shield. I’ll know you fought bravely if you come home dead, with your comrades carrying you on your shield. But if you come home alive without your shield, I’ll know you turned and ran from battle, dropping that heavy, clumsy thing so it wouldn’t slow you down. Don’t come home without your shield. Don’t come home a coward. Don’t shame your mother. Either carrying it, or on it.”

Paul to Timothy. At the end of his life — from yet another prison cell, aware that he may be about to take the blade, and abandoned by all but Luke, probably here his secretary — Paul writes what we have come to call 2 Timothy to his young protégé of some 15 years, back at Ephesus. 

Despite Timothy’s youth (and, alas, we simply don’t know how young he was), he’s been put in charge of what is surely one of the largest of the churches Paul had planted, certainly the church he had invested the most time in. Of late, Timothy’s authority in Ephesus has been challenged by strong local voices. Several years earlier Paul had warned the elders of Ephesus that not only would they be set upon by fierce wolves from outside that church, but that from among their own selves there would arise people speaking perverse things to draw away disciples after them (Acts 20:29-30). Indeed, that appears to be what has happened — strong and disruptive voices are maintaining that the resurrection has already taken place (2 Timothy 2:18), and that (oddly) marriage is forbidden, as well as are certain foods (1 Timothy 4:3). 

Commentator Gordon Fee suggests, and rightly so, I think, that the reason Paul casts 1 Timothy in terms of qualifications for leadership is that these are voices indigenous to the church — this is why Paul warns against setting up “neophytes” (that’s Greek for “spiritual rookies”) as “overseers” (1 Timothy 3:6). Explicit is the fact that Timothy’s youth is being held against him by the opposition (1 Timothy 4:12). Implicit is the fact that Timothy’s locus of power lies outside the community, in Paul’s “laying on of hands” (and remember Timothy is from Lystra — he’s an outsider to Ephesus). Thus, this new rival core of leadership has enough local social clout to intimidate Timothy. In 2 Timothy, Paul writes to a younger ministry protégé who’s been knocked off his game. He is playing back on his heels (2 Timothy 1:6). And no matter the sport — you start playing on your heels, you’re done. 

Paul’s message is precisely that of a Spartan mother to a son she is sending off to battle: “Either carrying it, or on it.” 

Courage: what it isn’t. Negatively, Paul tells Timothy: 1) don’t be ashamed of the gospel; 2) don’t be surprised at the opposition (it comes with living in “the latter days”); 3) don’t get sucked into controversies over unimportant matters; 4) don’t knuckle under when it comes to important matters; and 5) don’t over-react and let your own belligerence become just as big a problem as your opponents’ (for the particulars, read through 2 Timothy 1 and 2). 

Courage: what it is. Positively, Paul points to three gifts of the Holy Spirit (2 Timothy 1:7). The Spirit comes with power (we know the power to convince people lies not in ourselves). The Spirit comes with love (we, no less than Spartan warriors, will fight more than anything else because of the mothers and wives and brothers and sisters and children and friends we love). The Spirit bestows self-control (courage learns to overcome fear and to measure its responses). 

“Coach, I felt like I was going to die!” One night the Little League team I was coaching needed just three outs to get a win. We had been ahead by a whole bunch of runs. But one of our stronger pitchers had run out of gas. The other team had pulled closer, and was within two batters of bringing the tying runner to the plate. 

The other coaches and I turned to one of our smallest players, Patrick, to all appearances the least likely of closers — but a kid we knew could throw strikes — and we knew the rest of the team would make plays behind him. 

As soon as we put him on the mound his mother came running to the dugout: “What do you think you’re doing!?” We said, “Patrick’s just who we need with the ball right now.” Sure enough, he made good enough pitches and the other kids made good enough plays. Against the last batter Patrick was breathing so hard, his lungs were the size of a blimp. Afterwards, one of our assistant coaches asked him, “So, Patrick, how were you feeling out there?” 

“Coach,” he said, “I felt like I was going to die.” 

Courage says: “Here I am, and I’m going to do my best, even if it feels like I’m going to die. I sure hope my coach knows what he’s doing — anyway, here goes.”  

Know what? Your Coach does know what he’s doing when he gives you the ball. So, you just throw it. 

Be blessed this day, 

Reggie Kidd+