To Bring Christ's Bride Through It All - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Wednesday • 10/23/2024 •

Proper 24

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 38; Song of Songs 2:1-7; Revelation 8:1-13; Luke 10:17-24

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)

For our Old Testament reading this week and the next two, I am treating the Song of Songs instead of the lectionary’s choice, Ecclesiasticus (Wisdom of Ben Sirach). Together, I hope we are discovering or rediscovering some of this “Best of Song’s” enchantment. Today’s portion is Song of Songs 2:1–7. 

Love’s “already” and “not yet” in the Song of Songs. The best way to take today’s verses in Song of Songs, I think, is as a dreamlike reverie. Our female singer recalls an exchange of compliments between herself and her beloved: he has compared her to a lily among brambles, she has compared him to a fruit-bearing tree among plain forest trees that bear no fruit. She recalls his having set a lavish place for them in his “house of wine,” where he has even hung a banner proclaiming his love for her. As the RSV rightly renders 2:4: “He brought me to the banqueting house, and his banner over me was love.” She recalls the overwhelming sensory delight of the food and of the wine … and of being held in his arms. 

But at the moment he is absent, though the text does not explain why. Nevertheless, the text takes us inside the ache that love’s touch has awakened in her. And she speaks to her female companions—whether literally or in her reverie: “By the heavens (“gazelles” and “wild does” are terms that in Hebrew look like euphemisms for “mighty ones” who make up the “army of hosts” of the Lord of hosts), don’t awaken love before its time.” 

This last note—this plaintiff, poignant yearning for love—becomes a theme in the Song of Songs. It will be sounded twice more in the Song of Songs—here at 2:7, and then also at 3:5 and 8:4. Each time, love’s yearning is answered by the arrival of the beloved (2:8; 3:6-7; 8:5). 

Jewish and Christian interpreters alike have found themselves irresistibly contemplating the “already” and “not yet” dynamic of God’s relationship with his people in these verses. The Targum (an Aramaic translation of the Bible) suggests that the “lovesickness” expressed in the Song refers to the longing of displaced Jewish people for their homeland; even so, sings Diaspora Israel, “I received the banner of His commandments over me with love.” For their part, Christians have known an Incarnate Lord who has healed the leper and the lame and the blind and the dead. Jesus has allowed his own body to be raised on a cross as a banner of God’s love. Now, even in the absence of his physical presence, he has promised to be nonetheless present by his Spirit at the Eucharistic Banqueting Table, where believers proclaim his death “until his coming again” (1 Corinthians 11:26). 

There is perhaps no better juxtaposition of love’s “already” and love’s “not yet” than in the pairing of today’s Gospel reading with today’s reading from Revelation. 

Love’s “already” in Luke. In Luke, the seventy whom Jesus has sent out return with such amazing reports of God’s healing power that they have seen demons submit to them. Jesus tells them that while they were ministering, “I watched Satan fall from heaven like a flash of lightning” (Luke 10:18). And it’s altogether telling that Jesus reminds his disciples that the greater blessing by far is that their names are written in heaven—a place at the Table of the Messianic Banquet is more important than the level of power they manifest in this life. “Blessed are the eyes that see what you see!” Here is love’s “already”—the kiss from heaven. “For I tell you that many prophets and kings desired to see what you see, but did not see it, and to hear what you hear, but did not hear it” (Luke 10:23b-24).

Love’s “not yet” in Revelation. In Revelation 5, Jesus Christ, portrayed as the Lion of Judah who has been slain as a Lamb, comes forward as being the only one who is worthy to unroll the scrolls of history. In chapters 6 & 7, he unrolls the first six scrolls; and they tell a tale of judgment. That brings us to today’s reading of Revelation 8. In this chapter, there is a pregnant pause as Jesus opens the seventh seal: “there was silence in heaven for about a half an hour.” 

Something extraordinary happens during this half an hour. Judgment will continue; that is why seven trumpets are distributed to seven angels. But just then, before the blowing of the trumpets, an angel with a golden censer appears before the altar:

he was given a great quantity of incense to offer with the prayers of all the saints on the golden altar that is before the throne. And the smoke of the incense, with the prayers of the saints, rose before God from the hand of the angel. Then the angel took the censer and filled it with fire from the altar and threw it on the earth; and there were peals of thunder, rumblings, flashes of lightning, and an earthquake (Revelation 8:3b-5).

Ever since Revelation 6:10, the martyred saints have been crying out “How long?” before the Lord metes out justice on the earth. “How long” must the “not yet” of our redemption go on? Now, here in Revelation 8, we see that the prayers of the saints accompany the trumpets of judgment. In our further reading in Revelation, we shall see that God is sovereignly at work. He intends to bring final judgment against all that is evil and to bring Christ’s Bride through it all. And at one and the same time, what God is sovereignly and, I would submit, lovingly doing toward that end, he does in response to our prayers, rising upon the incense. 

Worship, once again, takes center stage for us. In the context of the Song of Songs, our participation in the Eucharist is a celebration of love that has already been shown us in Christ. In the context of Revelation, our participation in the ministry of prayer is an anticipation of love’s conquest of evil and the preparation of the Marriage Feast of the Lamb. 

Be blessed this day,

Reggie Kidd+

The Lord's Love for His People - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Tuesday • 10/22/2024 •

Proper 24

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 26; Psalm 28; Song of Songs 1:9-17; Revelation 7:9-17; Luke 10:1-16

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)

For our Old Testament reading this week and the next two, I am treating the Song of Songs instead of the lectionary’s choice, Ecclesiasticus (Wisdom of Ben Sirach). Together, I hope we can discover or rediscover some of this “Best of Song’s” enchantment. Today’s portion is Song of Songs 1:9–17.

Love has its own reasons. I compare you, my love, to a mare among Pharaoh’s chariots — Song of Songs 1:9. Some images in the Song are impenetrable to us nearly 3,000 years after the fact. This one, however, seems to be identifiable. Egyptian charioteers would make sure that all of their horses were stallions—that is, male horses. The danger of mixing in mares (female horses) is that, if perchance a mare came into season, chaos would ensue. In the song, the beloved (the male lover) says that he is so strongly attracted to the woman that his feelings are virtually uncontrollable. Her beauty is irresistible to him. 

For her part, her lover’s very scent (which she likens to nard, myrrh, and henna) takes her to a garden spot—to an oasis (which is what En-Gedi is) in the wilderness, she says, or to a forest of pungent pines and cedars. It’s as though, when they are together, Eden has been recreated. They can explore a rediscovered innocence and delight in each other. 

Jewish and Christian interpreters were convinced that this bracing paean to human love is in the Bible because it bears meaning for divine love as well. Believing that the Temple’s sights and smells (cedar and incense) were designed as a sensory recalling of the Garden of Eden, these interpreters (and I think with good reason) ask us to imagine the place of worship as a place in which the Lord and his people express their “takenness” with each other. 

Odd as it may sound at first, there’s something about the Lord’s love for his people that is beyond rational calculation and covenantal obligation. In Deuteronomy, the only accounting that Yahweh is able to give for his fondness for his people is: “I love you because I love you” (Deuteronomy 7:8). In terms of the Song, the Lord is like the stallion who discovers a mare among the chariots. Conversely, what is to be called up from us, his people, involves, of course, discipline of will and formation of mind—but at bottom, it is “love,” something that is more visceral, something that is irresistibly attracted to what the psalmist calls “the beauty of holiness” (Psalm 96:9). That’s something that strikes me every time I walk into the Cathedral where it is my privilege to worship, and breathe in the incense-laden air from decades of worship there. 

The glory of worship. Amen! Blessing and honor and glory…! Amen! — Revelation 7:12. The Book of Revelation is brutally honest about the devastation and suffering that Planet Earth suffers on the way to its final, complete, redemption. But it is terribly important to remember all along that the story line is moving toward consummation: toward the Marriage Feast of the Lamb (Revelation 19) and toward a New Jerusalem under New Heavens and on a New Earth (Revelation 21-22). It is equally important to remember that all along the way to that consummation, the people of the Lamb anticipate it with exuberant, lavish, loving praise, as in today’s reading from Revelation. We worship as though that which is “not yet” (the end of death and decay and suffering) were “already.” 

Revelation’s perspective is precisely that of the Song of Songs, where the consummation of love is both longed for (from tomorrow’s reading: “do not stir or awaken love until it is ready”—2:8) and already experienced (again, from tomorrow’s reading: “he brought me to the banqueting house”—2:4). 

Herein lies the glory of worship. Because our Shepherd-Husband will one day “guide us to the springs of the water of life” (Revelation 7:17), we submit in the “now” to the waters of baptismal cleansing. Because one day we “will hunger no more, and thirst no more” (Revelation 7:16), we taste already the Bread and the Wine. And because in the day of the great settling of accounts “God will wipe away every tear from our eyes,” even our funeral services become forward-looking celebrations of resurrection. As the Prayer Book says, “Yet even at the grave we make our song: Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia.” 

Be blessed this day, 

Reggie Kidd+

The Best of Songs - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Monday • 10/21/2024 •

Proper 24

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 25; Song of Songs 1:1-7; Revelation 7:1-8; Luke 9:51-62

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)

For our Old Testament reading during the next three weeks, I will be treating the Song of Songs instead of the lectionary’s choice, Ecclesiasticus (Wisdom of Ben Sirach). Together, I hope we can discover or rediscover its enchantment. Today’s portion is Song of Songs 1:1–7. 

Song of Songs 1:2-4: Love & desire. Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth! For your love is better than wine — Song of Songs 1:2. These are not the sort of words with which one expects a book of the Bible to begin, are they? But they are a marvelous keynote for this “best of songs”: the main voice throughout this book will be that of a woman who yearns for the loving embrace of her beloved. 

“There is something dreamy about these opening lines of the Song,” says Old Testament scholar Ilana Pardes (The Song of Songs: A Biography, p. 1). If you can read Hebrew, you will recognize the luscious “sh” sound predominating in the first two lines; in the opening paragraph, the voice vacillates between the woman’s speaking of her lover in the third person, and her addressing him in the second person; we are never quite sure exactly where we are, as the scene changes from intimate, private space to outdoor, festive space; we aren’t quite sure either whether her lover is an actual king, or whether her love makes him seem like one. As Pardes says, “It is a dream zone—nothing is completely discernable—everything is deeply felt.” 

Going forward in our study, I’m OK with that. “Everything is deeply felt.” That is one of the primary take-aways from this book. Those of us who have been around church long enough have been taught that biblical love is agape-love, and that agape-love is primarily about “giving” and not “feeling” (or eros-love). According to Song of Songs, it’s not quite that simple. Biblical love—love between a woman and a man, and love between us and our Lord—feels deeply. To be sure, deep feeling gives deeply as well. But deep feeling feels deeply—and that is good. Because God made deep feelings good. 

Song of Songs 1:4-8 — Love & eyes wide open. I am very dark but comely … my mother’s sons were angry with me … my own vineyard I have not kept — Song of Songs 1:5,6 (RSV). The woman who is the primary singer in our Song has been deeply wounded by her family, and she also acknowledges some sort of failing on her part. Her skin is deeply tanned, which in her world is not a sign of leisured beauty. In her case, it is a sign of being reduced to the degradation of laboring in the fields. Nor, for her part, is she free from fault: “my own vineyard I have not kept.”

A second take-away from this “best of songs” is that love loves with eyes wide open. There will be several phrases in this song that speak of love’s intoxicating power (2:5; 4:9; 5:1,8), but in this book, love is always cognizant of imperfections. At the human level, often the beloved’s imperfections become the things that the lover finds most attractive. 

In his biography of Ulysses S. Grant, author Ron Chernow narrates a conversation between Grant and his wife Julia, who had grown up cross-eyed. As Grant began to become more and more a public figure, Julia, fearing that her “so very, very plain” appearance would hamper their public life, wanted to have surgery to straighten her eyes. Ulysses would have none of it: “Did I not see you and fall in love with you with these same eyes? I like them just as they are, and now, remember, you are not to interfere with them. They are mine, and let me tell you, Mrs. Grant, you had better not make any experiments, as I might not like you half so well with any other eyes.” Chernow concludes, “The anecdote, as well as many others, attests to the depth of Grant’s unconditional love for his wife, and vice versa” (Grant, p. 332).  

Love is a place of deep feeling and of deep giving because it is first of all a place of deep grace. For her part, Mrs. Grant—and Mr. Grant’s best friends—loved him through, and in spite of, his debilitating alcoholism. And it was their love that fortified him in his struggle. 

Christ loves us not because we are without fault. In fact, it is to us in our tragic fallenness that he has drawn near. And we bless him for it. As the ancient church sang in the darkness of Holy Saturday’s Great Vigil:

O truly needful sin of Adam which was blotted out by the death of Christ!

O happy fault (“felix culpa”) which merited so great a Redeemer!

Our love for Christ is infinitely and forever sweeter by virtue of the fact that he comes not for the lovely but for the unlovely, not for the perfect but for the imperfect. He not only comes to forgive, he comes to unite himself to us, and in doing so to turn our tragedy to comedy, our ugliness to beauty, our humiliation to glory. Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth!

Revelation 7: A perfected Israel. As providence would have it, our reading of Song of Songs will parallel the Book of Revelation’s account of the way God works to draw a people together from Israel and the nations, forms them as the Bride of Christ, protects them, and purifies them for the Marriage Feast of the Lamb (chapters 7 through 19). 

In today’s reading, we see that God’s ultimate plan is to rescue 144,000 “of the people of Israel.” I submit to you that this is a figurative number—a number of love’s perfection, not of arbitrary exclusion. It is the square of 12 (12 being the number of Israel’s tribes) multiplied by 1,000 (1,000 being a number of magnitude), and is John’s way of referring to what Paul calls in his epistle to the Romans “the fullness of [the Jews]” (Romans 11:12). Paul balances out “the fullness of the Jews” with “the fullness of the Gentiles” in Romans 11:25. Just so, John’s 144,000 Jews receives its complement in the last half of Revelation 7 (tomorrow’s reading) with a countless throng from every nation and tribe and people and tongue “standing before the throne and the Lamb” (v. 9). 

Between the first and second halves of Revelation 7, we get the dual mystery of God’s great plan: he elects perfectly, and does so with an expansive heart. Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth!

Luke 9: Sublime resolution. When the days drew near for him to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem — Luke 9:51. Luke so finely balances a sense of God’s perfect timing (“when the days drew near”) with the resolution it took Jesus to carry out his mission (“he set his face”). And there’s also the fine balance between the horror we know the upcoming crucifixion to be and the way Luke refers to the end of the mission to be Christ’s being taken up into glory (“for him to be taken up”). Also finely balanced is the implicit message to the apostles to “let it be” when people reject them, and thus him (“But he turned and rebuked them”), and his “all or nothing” call to follow him (“No one who puts a hand to the plow…”). What a wonderful Redeemer, bringing a wonderful redemption. Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth! 

Be blessed this day, 

Reggie Kidd+

Yearning for Love - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Friday • 10/18/2024 •
Proper 23 

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 16; Psalm 17; Song of Songs (overview); Acts 28:1-16; Luke 9:28-36 

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) 

Special note with regard to the Old Testament. During the next three weeks, I will be treating the Song of Songs instead of the lectionary’s choice, Ecclesiasticus (Wisdom of Ben Sirach). Despite the canonical status of the Song of Songs, and despite the fact that it was one of the biblical books that ancient and medieval believers (both Jewish and Christian) found most fascinating and fruitful, people in the modern era have ignored it for the most part. The Daily Office lectionary finds no place for it in the two-year cycle of Old Testament readings. Since this year’s cycle is one in which we read Song of Songs’ sister books in the wisdom tradition (Ecclesiastes and Job), I decided to dive into it. I hope you and I will be able to discover or rediscover its enchantment.  

The Bible calls the book the “Song of Songs,” that is, “the best song.” This is a song about yearning for love. There’s much to yearn for in our world—it’s as though we are in an extended season of yearning. We yearn for freedom from disease and from uncertainty about public health. We yearn for the laying down of arms between nations. We yearn for civility in the public square. We yearn for liars to lay down their pens, to walk away from their keyboards, and to turn off their microphones. We yearn for racial reckoning and reconciliation. We yearn for safe streets and safe schools and safe churches and synagogues. We yearn for the end of domestic violence and drug addiction. We yearn for the realization of medieval English mystic Julian of Norwich’s promise: “all shall be well.” Above all we yearn for the return of love.  

Image: Adaptation, "#ItsLiverpool banners - Port of Liverpool Building, Mann Island & Museum of Liverpool" by ell brown is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.

Especially during this season of yearning, I’d offer this book of the Bible as genuinely “the best song.” Song of Songs teaches us to sing, amid everything that is wrong in the world: “I’m my Beloved’s and he is mine. His banner over me is love” (Song of Songs 2:4).  

Even before Christians came along, people in the Jewish community knew to read this Song at two levels. On the first level, the Song of Songs is—gloriously!—a full throated anthem in praise of conjugal, even of sensual, love between a man and a woman. Over the centuries, commentators—Jewish and Christian—have debated as to the exact scenario being depicted. By far the majority of commentators suggest we are witness to a celebration between two lovers: a Solomon-like, shepherd-king-husband and a Shulamite (probably a play on Solomon’s name), queenly wife. Coming from the God who made man and woman to come together as “one flesh,” there’s plenty to relish in a song that leads with “Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth! For your love is better than wine.”  

Beyond that, though, from Day One, readers—or singers!—of this song have sensed that there’s more at play in this “best of songs” than merely its surface meaning. In the first century AD, Rabbi Akiba said, “Whoever trills the Song of Songs in banquet halls—and treats it as a mere lyric—has no share in the world to come” (Targum Sanhedrin 12.10). Indeed, he maintains, the “whole world is not worth the day on which the Song of Songs was given to Israel for all the Writings are holy and the Song of Songs is the Holy of Holies” (Mishnah Yadayim 3.5).  

Jewish interpreters saw a second level of meaning in the Song of Songs: a meditation on the prophets’ theme of Yahweh as husband and his people as bride (Hosea 1-3; Jeremiah 2-3; 31:32; Ezekiel 16; Isaiah 50:1; 54:5-6). They read this “best of songs” as a love song between God and his people. When they read “I am my beloved’s and he is mine,” they could not help but hear resonances of “I will be your God and you will be my people.” And in their wake, Christian interpreters heard a song in praise of the love between Christ, i.e., God-as-Groom-in-the Flesh, and his Bride, the Church (John 3:29; 2 Corinthians 11:2; Ephesians 5:21-33; Revelation 19).  

As we explore this “best of songs” together in the next three weeks, I pray for you a renewed sense that Christ, our Heavenly Bridegroom, loves you intimately, tenderly, and persistently. And I pray for you a certain “sacramental cast” to all your relationships here on earth, that they would all be consecrated to the Lord. This “best song” teaches us to guard all relationships—and especially those of intimacy—to cherish them, to preserve them, and to be wholeheartedly and unreservedly given to them.  

Be blessed this day,  

Reggie Kidd+ 

Trustworthy and Beautiful - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Thursday • 10/17/2024 •
Proper 23 

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 18:1-20; Jonah 3:1-10; 4:1-11; Acts 27:27-44; Luke 9:18-27 

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) 

As you finish this reading of Jonah, I hope you will appreciate these four points the book makes. They have struck me in a fresh way.  

God appoints. The Lord appoints “a large fish” (1:17). The Lord God appoints “a bush” (4:6). God appoints “a worm” (4:7). God appoints (even though NRSV uses a different word, the Hebrew does not) “a sultry east wind” (4:8). Throughout the story, God is orchestrating things according to his will. That’s what the Bible’s God does: orchestrate. As Creator and Lord of the entire universe, he works all things according to his good pleasure.  

We may not always be able to discern God’s hand. Indeed, it’s almost as though Jonah resists discerning God’s hand. I’m sure I do the same. But the hand is always there. And the way of wisdom is to look for, and to be ready to yield to, that hand.  

God is merciful. The portrait of Jonah in this account is intended, I am sure, to serve as an unflattering mirror for a proud and self-important Israel. The pathetic picture of Jonah stands in complete contrast to the very nature of the God who has revealed himself as Yahweh, the “I AM,” who pities and delivers the enslaved, and who then calls upon those so delivered to extend his pity to others.  

When Jonah finally does go to Nineveh to deliver his prophetic message, he pronounces only doom, nothing else: “Forty days more, and Nineveh shall be overthrown” (Jonah 3:4—the message is even more concise in the original, consisting of but five Hebrew words). There’s no call for repentance. No hint of there being any “out.” Just five words of doom and gloom. It’s the Ninevites themselves—led by their king—who, “believing God,” take it upon themselves to fast, to put on sackcloth, and to “turn from their evil ways and from the violence that is in their hands” (Jonah 3:9). All this, just in case God might have a change in heart: “Who knows? God may relent and change his mind?” (Jonah 3:9).  

Know what? God did “change his mind about the calamity that he had said he would bring upon them; and he did not do it” (Jonah 3:10). I’m pretty sure the point isn’t to present a logical puzzle—i.e., how can a sovereign God who has ordered all things from the beginning of time be induced to change his mind? I’m pretty sure the point is to shine a light on the essentially merciful nature of God. As the Prayer Book’s Prayer of Humble Access puts it: “But thou art the same Lord whose property is always to have mercy.” God is, as Jonah begrudgingly (!) acknowledges: “a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and ready to relent from punishing” (Jonah 4:2).  

Never forget that. Never, ever, ever.  

God cares about his whole creation. Doesn’t it catch your eye that the Ninevite king decrees that animals as well as humans shall fast in repentance, and that along with humans, “animals shall be covered with sackcloth, and they shall cry mightily to God” (Jonah 3:7-8)? That’s a clue to a larger theme in Jonah. Puzzled as to the reason for the storm that has come upon them, the sailors ask Jonah who he is and where he comes from. He answers: “I am a Hebrew. … I worship the Lord, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land” (Jonah 1:9). Yahweh, the Lord of heaven and the earth and the seas, puts in play a storm, a fish, a bush, and a worm to accomplish his purposes. And the sackcloth-covered animals are a nice touch in demonstration of “creation’s groaning” while it waits to be “set free from its bondage to decay and … [to] obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God” (Romans 8:21).  

In his notes in the New Interpreter’s Study Bible, Kenneth M. Craig, Jr., sagely observes:  

By the book’s end, the Lord emerges as a God of compassion, for Jonah and his people, to be sure, but also for other peoples and for animals. The book’s concluding rhetorical question—“Should I [the Lord] not be concerned about Nineveh, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand persons … and also many animals?”—deals less with repentance and more with creation (animals and humanity).  

God delights in the beautiful. All these truths could be set out as cold propositional statements. In the Book of Jonah, though, they take the most artful form. Again, this from Kenneth Craig: 

The tale of Jonah is one of the Bible’s literary gems. Marked by symmetry, balance, word-play, irony, and surprise, the book purports to teach Jonah (and all readers) about the problem of a gracious acceptance for one’s own people (“Deliverance is from the Lord,” Jonah says in 2:9) while churlishly resenting similar treatment for others (4:1-5).  

The book is one of the most delightful reads in all of Scripture. Take time, if you are able, to read back through it, looking for:  

• parallels (e.g., the ship captain in chapter 1, and the Ninevite king in chapter 3; or “Perhaps the god will spare us a thought” in 1:6, and “Who knows? God may relent…” in 3:9),  

• irony (e.g., creation and even the Ninevites respond to God more appropriately than his prophet),  

• and even “Easter eggs” anticipating the coming of Christ (e.g., salvation-via-drowning, three days and nights in a kind of grave).  

May Jonah, through his hard-earned lessons, teach us that God is both absolutely trustworthy and consummately beautiful. “O worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness” (Psalm 96:9 KJV).  

Be blessed this day, 

Reggie Kidd+ 

A Fresh Start Because of a Fish - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Wednesday • 10/16/2024 •
Proper 23 

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 119:1-24; Jonah 1:17-2:10; Acts 27:9-26; Luke 9:1-17 

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) 

In today’s readings both the runaway prophet Jonah and the future apostle Paul experience rescue for the sake of mission.  

Jonah: from “the belly of Sheol.” “Where can I flee from your presence?” asks the psalmist. “If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there,” he says, answering his own question (Psalm 139:7b,8b). Death itself is no barrier to the God who is determined to know, to claim, to fellowship with … to love. For his part, Jonah has done everything he can to get away from God. Three times, yesterday’s reading notes that Jonah flees “from the presence of God” (Jonah 1:3 [twice], 10). Jonah’s flight carries him down, down, down: “down” to Joppa to find a boat to take him to Tarshish, “down” into the hold of the ship to escape into slumber, and finally down “into” the sea (Jonah 1:3,5,15).  

Right there, as low as he can go, as far away from God as he can seem to get, Jonah comes face to face with the God he can’t escape—right there in the belly of a great fish. Right there in what he calls “the belly of Sheol,” the belly of death. There he learns to bless the God from whom there is no escape. There Jonah learns that God hears from his “holy temple” (Jonah 2:4,7).  

Image: Pieter Lastman , Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Having hit bottom, Jonah learns to cry out: “I called to the Lord out of my distress, and he answered me; out of the belly of Sheol I cried, and you heard my voice” (Jonah 2:2). The hinge of the entire book of Jonah lies at 2:6: “… I went down… yet you brought me up.” As a result, the fish whose belly should have been the end of Jonah becomes instead the end of an old Jonah and the beginning of a new Jonah. A means of death becomes the means of life. Small wonder Jesus likens Jonah’s three days and three nights to his own: “For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth” (Matthew 12:40). Small wonder also that generations of Christians have seen a picture of Jonah’s and their baptisms in Jonah’s symbolic death in the belly of the fish and his symbolic resurrection when he is “spewed out upon the dry land” (Jonah 2:10).  Saved by a fish. Praise be.  

Acts: hope in the storm. “… we finally gave up all hope of being saved” — Acts 27:20. Emerging from his “baptism,” Jonah still has a lot to learn about the God who has loved him and saved him.  God loves and has saving designs on people who are “other” to Jonah (who nevertheless is still not ready to see God’s mercy extended to the Ninevites). Not so with Paul. Paul rises from his own baptism, scales removed from his eyes, ready to take the good news of Christ as Messiah, Savior, and Lord, to Jew and Greek alike, and see lives changed. As he describes it, Jesus’s call to Paul includes his being sent “to open [Gentiles’] eyes so that they may turn from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God, so that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified by faith in me” (Acts 26:18).  

As a result, when everybody else on the storm-tossed ship headed for Rome has lost hope (including Paul’s friend and companion in ministry, Luke, who numbers himself among the despairing with his “we finally gave up”) Paul is able to speak hope to the hopeless. He speaks calm in the storm: “I urge you now to keep up your courage, for there will be no loss of life among you, but only of the ship.” He narrates the appearance of an angel who promises that Paul’s mission will be carried out and that there will be safety for all on the ship. Paul continues, “So keep up your courage, men, for I have faith in God that it will be exactly as I have been told. But we will have to run aground on some island” (Acts 27:22,25-26). And so it shall be in tomorrow’s reading.  

For today, I pray for you and me a Jonah prayer and a Paul prayer. I pray for us the assurance that in the lowest of our lows—even when it’s a low we have fully brought upon ourselves—the grace of God is already there, ready to hear, ready to lift up. And I pray for you and for me calm amid any storm: fixed purpose, indominable courage, and an irresistible love for the things and the people the Lord loves.  

Be blessed this day, 

Reggie Kidd+ 

Two Journeys, Different Goals - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Tuesday • 10/15/2024 •
Proper 23 

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 5; Psalm 6; Jonah 1;1-17; Acts 26:24-27:8; Luke 8:40-56 

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)

We take a three-day journey now with the prophet Jonah. It so happens that this reading overlaps with the reading of those chapters in Acts that recount the apostle Paul’s voyage to Rome. Reading the prophet Jonah’s oceanic misadventures side by side with the apostle Paul’s oceanic adventures makes for intriguing comparisons. Two servants of the Word of God make westward sea journeys: Jonah towards Tarshish (believed to be near modern day Spain), and Paul towards Rome. One flees God’s call to bless the nations. The other pursues God’s call to bless the nations.  

Jonah. According to 2 Kings, the prophet Jonah lives during the zenith of the Northern Kingdom. In 2 Kings 14:25-28, Jonah ministers for at least part of the 41-year reign of Jeroboam II (786–746 B.C.). Scripture judges Jeroboam II spiritually to be one of the worst of Israel’s kings: “He did evil in the eyes of the Lord.” Nonetheless, God used him to expand Israel’s borders both to the north (Lebo Hamath) and to the south (Sea of the Arabah = Dead Sea), and to protect, even “save,” Israel through military victories over the Syrians (14:25,28).  

The message of the book of Jonah is that God is not interested in prospering and protecting his people so they can keep his goodness to themselves. God’s call to Abram in Genesis 12 included the promise that Abram and his family would be a blessing to the nations. Ever since, the Hebrew people have been on mission to take God’s good intentions to the world—even to a hostile world.  

The time of Jonah’s ministry (which also happened to be when Amos and Hosea were inveighing against Israel’s moral decay and religious infidelity) was a time of intense patriotism, smug materialism, and ugly xenophobia in Israel. Augmenting Amos’s and Hosea’s messages, God challenges Israel’s self-absorption and self-protection by reminding her of his love for the surrounding nations. What better way of doing so than by sending a prophet, Jonah, to Nineveh, the capital city of Assyria, the biggest power—and therefore the greatest political threat to Israel—in the Ancient Near East?  

Jonah understood fully what God was up to, and said, “Nope! Not having it!!” Jonah attempted to travel as far from Nineveh as possible, to Tarshish, at the western end of the Mediterranean. 

God will change his heart. The belly of a large fish initiates Jonah’s own “Damascus Road Experience,” the beginning of his lesson about God’s love for all people.  

Acts. It’s quite a different experience to read about the apostle Paul’s resolve to get himself to the capital city of the then-known world’s dominant city—Rome—and there to proclaim God’s “good news” of God’s saving love: “the power of God for salvation” for Jew and Gentile alike (see Romans 1:16-17).  

Before Paul’s journey from the shores of Israel, he has opportunity to share that good news with the great-grandson of the very Herod the Great who had tried to assassinate Baby Jesus (see Matthew 2). In a remarkable scene, set in the (even to this day) gorgeous theatre-by-the-sea at Caesarea-by-the-Sea, Paul gives his final account of his Damascus Road Experience—his call from being persecutor of the faith to becoming apostle of the faith. In his speech, he stresses that it is not so much his own voice that Herod Agrippa is listening to but Jesus’s, the would-be victim of Agrippa’s great-grandfather.  

This same Jesus is now Christus Victor. Paul insists that what Scripture had said would happen has happened. The Messiah would suffer, “and that, by being the first to rise from the dead, he [the Messiah!] would proclaim light both to our people and to the Gentiles” (Acts 26:23, from yesterday’s reading). If I may point out the irony of the situation: Agrippa’s great-grandfather tried to kill Jesus for fear of being supplanted as king. But while Herod the Great is long gone, King Jesus lives. Paul is implying that Jesus is calling Agrippa, through Paul’s voice, to “repent and turn to God and do deeds consistent with repentance” (Acts 26:19, again, from yesterday’s reading).  

And though becoming “quickly persuad[ed] … to become a Christian” is indeed offered to this Herod, sadly he demurs (Acts 26:28). That makes Paul only the more determined to go—chains and all (26:29)—to Rome to make the same proclamation of God’s love in Christ the True King, with the same offer of eternal life, at the cost simply of loving obeisance.  

Be blessed this day, 

Reggie Kidd+ 

A Garden Land - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Monday • 10/14/2024 •
Proper 23 

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 1; Psalm 2; Psalm 3; Micah 7:1-7(8-20); Acts 26:1-23; Luke 8:26-39 

Adding Sunday’s OT Scripture: Micah 6:1-8 

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) 

The last two chapters of Micah come to a thrilling (if complicated) climax. In Micah 6:1-8 (which would have been yesterday’s reading), the prophet presents Yahweh’s covenant-lawsuit against his unfaithful people: despite his mighty works to bring them out of Egypt, to conduct them through the wilderness, to win battles for them, and to bring them into the Promised Land—despite all the “saving acts of the Lord,” they have not kept covenant with him (Micah 6:1-5). What will restore covenant? Not works of empty religious ritual—no matter how pious looking, no matter how extreme (Micah 6:6-7).  

What will restore the broken relationship is a return to the terms of God’s covenant (Micah 6:8):  

• Do justice. The covenant calls for Israelites to treat one another as well as strangers and foreigners (indeed, creation itself) with fairness and equity. Even rest on the Sabbath day contemplates the well-being of servants and livestock and the land (Deuteronomy 5:12-15; Leviticus 26:34-35; 2 Chronicles 36:21). 
   

• Love kindness. The term here denotes something quite different from normal English associations with “kindness” (i.e., “being nice”). The Hebrew is ḥeseḏ, perhaps better rendered as “lovingkindness.” What it calls to mind is God’s lovingkindness toward his people, which invites—actually, demands—love in return. While it might feel awkward to translate the phrase, “Love lovingkindness,” that wording brings out its true resonance. Here, Micah is saying, “Yahweh has loved you! Love him back! Worship him and only him. Worship him his way, not yours. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength.”  
   

Walk humbly with your God. The “walking” evokes Psalm 1’s “two paths” of life, one of life, and one of death. To walk the path of life calls for a non-bloated, rather than an over-inflated, sense of self. It calls for a sense of dependence, rather than of independence. A sense of one’s smallness and contingency. It calls for what Paul would refer to as “not thinking more highly of yourself than you ought” (Romans 12:3).

Image: Pixabay

In the first part of chapter 7, Micah illustrates these points: 

• Doing justice means distancing oneself from practices like “lying in wait for blood … hunting one another with nets,” offering bribes and perverting justice (Micah 7:3).   

• Loving “lovingkindness” is all about “looking to the Lord … waiting for the God of my salvation” … expecting that “my God will hear me” (Micah 7:7). Loving “lovingkindness” is about worship from the heart.   

• The path of humility calls for “bearing the indignation of the Lord” when one has sinned, and then patiently waiting for Yahweh’s vindication (not one’s own!) in the sight of one’s detractors (Micah 7:9).  

Those who “do justice, love lovingkindness, and walk humbly with their God” will indeed experience vindication, release, and peace. And that is what the last half of the last chapter of Micah promises. Micah is given a brief glimpse into the glorious future that God plans for his people and his renewed earth.  

God, who first brought his people out of subjugation in Egypt, will one day expand their borders and cause his people to live “in the midst of a garden land” (Micah 7:11,14). He will bring refugees from all points of the compass—these refugees will come to God’s re-Edenized land after the desolation of God’s final judgment (Micah 7:12-14).  

The God who made promises to Abraham and Jacob will prove faithful and unswervingly loyal (Micah 7:20). He will pardon iniquity and pass over transgression (Micah 7:18). He will delight in showing clemency: “He will again have compassion upon us; he will tread our iniquities under foot” (Micah 7:19).  

Indeed, in Jesus Christ, Israel’s boundaries have been expanded to incorporate a worldwide “Israel of God” (Galatians 6:15) made up of sons and daughters of Abraham and Sarah from every tribe and tongue (that’s the essence of the message of Paul’s letter to the Galatians). New Creation has taken hold in and among all who are “in Christ”: “If anyone is ‘in Christ,’ there is “new creation”! The “old things” have gone away! Behold! New things have begun!” (2 Corinthians 5:17, translation mine). New creation has taken hold for the very reason that Christ has trodden our sins underfoot and nailed them to his Cross (Colossians 2:13-15). And, to turn once again to the language of Micah, all our sins have thus been finally and utterly cast “into the depths of the sea” (Micah 7:19). Praise be! 

Be blessed this day, 

Reggie Kidd+ 

Choose Wisely - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Friday • 10/11/2024 •
Proper 22

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 140; Psalm 142; Micah 3:9–4:5; Acts 24:24–25:12; Luke 8:1-15

Adding Saturday’s OT Scripture: Micah 5:1-4,10-15

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

Micah: depth and height. Biblical faith plumbs the deepest depths and scales the highest heights. Nowhere is this range more clearly on display than in today’s reading in Micah. Micah thunders that “the mountain of the house” of God will be reduced to a “wooded height.” Then the prophet immediately trumpets the good news that “in days to come the mountain of the Lord’s house shall be established as the highest of the mountains” (Micah 3:12–4:1). In other words, the Temple and Jerusalem will be razed, after which it will all be rebuilt and raised to a higher glory than that known under Solomon himself. 

Even as Micah prepares God’s people for the destruction and exile that are inescapable, he points to a day on the far side of that horrible experience when they will see God working wonders among them again. Israel will one day be the source of instruction (torah) and ethics (4:2) and of justice and peace for all the nations (4:3-4). With words that will also appear in Isaiah, the greatest of the prophets, Micah looks to weapons of war being transformed into implements of peace (4:3). He promises a day when anxious measures to secure safety in a dangerous world will yield to extended sabbath rest: “they shall all sit under their own vines and under their own fig trees, and no one shall make them afraid; for the mouth of the Lord has spoken” (4:4). 

Saturday’s reading in Micah furthers the trajectory of hope: at the center of this promise “in days to come” will be “one who is to rule in Israel, whose origin is from old,” and yet who will be born in Bethlehem, David’s hometown (Micah 5:2-4). Not surprisingly, we Christians have universally seen ourselves to be the direct beneficiaries to these promises, fulfilled in Jesus Christ. We are overwhelmingly grateful to find life and justice, and peace and rest in King Jesus, true Son of David. 

Image: "Vincent van Gogh - The Sower [1888]" by Gandalf's Gallery is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.

Luke: choose wisely. Biblical faith therefore sets forth the most extreme of choices: receive the word of promise and fulfillment with “an honest and good heart,” to find it bearing fruit “a hundred fold … with patient endurance.” Or dismiss that word, or treat it superficially, or let it become throttled by competing words—and lose out, eternally. The King has come, insists Luke’s Gospel: bow the knee, renounce other loyalties, and know everlasting shalom. 

Collect of the Reign of Christ: Almighty and everlasting God, whose will it is to restore all things in your well-beloved Son, the King of kings and Lord of lords: Mercifully grant that the peoples of the earth, divided and enslaved by sin, may be freed and brought together under his most gracious rule; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

Be blessed this day,

Reggie Kidd+

To Love Much - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Thursday • 10/10/2024 •
Proper 22

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 131; Psalm 132; Psalm 133; Micah 3:1-8; Acts 24:1-23; Luke 7:36-50 

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 readings show us striking alternatives. We can return God’s love with grateful love, with outright rejection, or with cold indifference.  

Luke. The centerpiece of today’s readings—indeed a centerpiece of Luke’s gospel—is Luke’s account of a “sinful woman” anointing Jesus. The passage is proof positive that Jesus is indeed the “friend of … sinners” people have come to think he is (Luke 7:34). What constitutes her sinfulness is left to our imaginations. Tradition has associated her with Mary Magdalene, but that is only tradition. The woman is unnamed, and so is the nature of her sin. That makes it easier, I think, for each of us to put ourselves in her place—because that’s where each of us belongs. 

Image: "Mary Anoints Jesus" by elizaraxi is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

What is of note is the courage of her very presence at this table of such very righteous people, the custom-defying physicality of her ministrations, and the utter lack of reserve in her display of emotion. Surely, she has not been invited to this party, but here she is: bathing Jesus’s feet with her tears and drying them with her hair, and anointing them with expensive oil. This is party-crashing at its very best! 

Reading the heart of Simon his host as only the God-Man can (“the Pharisee … said to himself ‘If this man were a prophet…’”), Jesus rebukes him because Simon has failed to provide normal, minimal hospitality to his guest. Jesus then tells the parable of the two debtors whose relative loves match the relative weight of the debts forgiven them (Luke 7:41-43). 

And, reading her heart as only the God-Man can, Jesus says of the uninvited woman, “Her sins, which were many, have been forgiven; hence she has shown great love” (Luke 7:47 NRSV), or “Her great love proves that her many sins have been forgiven” (REB). 

Those who have been loved much, love much in return. 

I pray that you and I never lose track of what it cost Love to gain our forgiveness, nor ever outlive our love for the Payer of the debt. 

Micah. Luke’s account puts in relief the anger of Micah the prophet at the political and religious rulers who are supposed to “know justice,” but instead “hate the good and love the evil” — whose unjust practices amount to a metaphorical cannibalism: “who eat the flesh of my people, and flay the skin off them” (Micah 3:1-3). Love of self has displaced any possibility of welcoming God’s love. And so, consequences. Purported prophets only “lead my people astray” (3:5). Seers go blind (3:6). Diviners get “no answer from God” (3:7). There’s only one possible result: “Jerusalem shall become a heap of ruins, and the mountain of the house (i.e., the Temple) a wooded height” (3:12). 

As the writer to the Hebrews will later put it: “It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God” (Hebrews 10:31). To rework it slightly: “It is a fearful thing to say ‘No!’ over and over again to a protective God’s overtures of love.” 

In the Book of Acts, the Roman governor Felix shows himself to be too cool a customer to open himself to God’s loving approach. The Felix before whom Paul appears in this passage is a minor “somebody” in the Roman world. He is a freedman of Antonia, the Emperor Claudius’s mother. Felix’s brother, Pallas, is Claudius’s secretary of finance. The Roman historian Tacitus says Felix “occupied the office of a king while having the mind of a slave, saturated with cruelty and lust” (Histories 5.9). Years after his encounter with Paul, Felix will perish at Pompeii during the famous eruption of Vesuvius. What a story his conversion could have made. Today’s passage (and the first four verses of tomorrow’s reading) is the lone recorded account of Felix’s encounter with the grace of God. This would have been one big fat celebrity conversion. But it was not to be. All Felix can think about is how he might possibly extract a bribe (Acts 24:26) from this semi-famous Jewish personage who says he has brought “to my nation alms and offerings” (Acts 24:17).

Like Simon the Pharisee, Felix the governor nonchalantly dismisses God’s kiss of grace. May you and I not do so. Instead, may we return much love with much love. 

Be blessed this day,

Reggie Kidd+

An Invitation to the Dance - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Wednesday • 10/9/2024 •
Proper 22

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 119:145-176; Micah 2:1-13; Acts 23:23-35; Luke 7:18-35

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)

Let’s focus today on Jesus’s message to John the Baptist about God’s timeline for salvation. 

In Luke’s Gospel, John the Baptist had been looking forward to One more powerful than he baptizing with “the Holy Spirit and fire” — coming to gather the wheat, “but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire” (Luke 3:16,17). John the Baptist had been prophesying a single coming of God with a double effect: blessing and judgment. The kinds of things that are being reported to John the Baptist in Herod’s prison are indeed signs of the inauguration of the blessings of the age of the Spirit: the sick are being raised up, and even the dead (Luke 7:1-17). But where’s the fire? Where’s the burning of the chaff? Where’s the reckoning for the likes of Herod who has arrested John (see Matthew 11:2)? How is the Baptist to reconcile the coming of the good (the healings) with the continuance of the bad (the persistence of evil)?

Image: Titian , Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

“The year of the Lord’s favor.” It is to make a dual point that Luke narrates today’s story. The message parallels Luke’s earlier account of Jesus’s reading of Scripture in the synagogue in Nazareth (Luke 4:16-21). There Jesus had ended the reading of the Isaiah passage with “the year of the Lord’s favor” (Luke 4:19; Isaiah 61:2). He had not included the next phrase in Isaiah, “and the day of the vengeance of our God.” What’s being fulfilled at Jesus’s coming, and in his reading, is the blessing of God’s people. For now, punishment of God’s enemies is being delayed. The Lord has come with the benevolence that the prophets had promised, but not yet with the final reckoning against all that is evil. A new age is arriving, the ushering in of an age of blessing: of “good news for the poor,” of “release to the captives,” of “recovery of sight to the blind,” of “letting the oppressed go free.” But not in totality—because the final settling of accounts and the ultimate meting out of judgment, is still “not yet.”

Thus, in today’s passage, for the sake of John the Baptist’s emissaries who are wondering on his behalf where is the combination of the Spirit of blessing and the fire of judgment, Jesus performs another clutch of messianic miracles. Doing so, in Luke 7:22, he points to the way these miracles prove that the Age of the Messiah—the Age of the Spirit—has indeed come: the blind receive their sight (Isaiah 35:5), the lame walk (Isaiah 35:6), the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear (Isaiah 29:18), the dead are raised (Isaiah 26:19), the poor have good news brought to them (Isaiah 61:1). 

But then Jesus says (I paraphrase Luke 7:23), “don’t stumble over the fact that God hasn’t taken Herod out yet, nor freed you from prison, nor wiped—just yet—all evil from the face of the earth.” 

John the Baptist’s task. In this passage, Jesus provides his most extensive commentary on John the Baptist’s role in the history of redemption. The Old Testament prophetic point of view had been that a day is approaching—a single day—in which God will come to bless his people and punish his enemies. John the Baptist is the last and the greatest of the bearers of this message. The sobriety of John’s ministry is that his job was to issue a call to repentance, a call for preparation, a call for getting one’s house in order. In the metaphor that Jesus uses, the Baptist’s presence in the wilderness was a “wailing” that amounted to an invitation to weep over sin and unworthiness. Weep, for judgment is coming—that’s his message. 

Invitation to the dance. What is happening, though, is that God’s coming is being staged in two parts. First, the Lord comes to bless—to open up an era of hope, of healing, of opportunity. First, he comes to provide redemption and to offer “a place on the team,” so to speak. At this first coming, he is being welcomed by all those who know they need grace to stand in the “day of vengeance of our God.” God’s Messiah is being welcomed by all those who know he has come to bring a forgiveness they desperately need. This first coming of the Lord (announced as the glad invasion of “joy” and “peace on earth” by the angels in Luke 2:10,14) is, in terms of the metaphor Jesus uses in today’s passage, “playing the pipe,” inviting people to dance (Luke 7:32). This Messiah has come “eating and drinking,” befriending “tax collectors and sinners” (Luke 7:34-35). 

I pray that the graciousness of the first coming of Jesus is not lost on us. I pray that we respond to his invitation to “join the team”—or, better, as the metaphor suggests: join the dance, grateful that the Dancer-from-Heaven delights in kicking up his heels with “tax collectors and sinners” like us. 

Be blessed this day, 

Reggie Kidd+