A Confident Sense of God's Favor - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Tuesday • 11/12/2024 •

Proper 27

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 78; Joel 1:15–2:11; Revelation 19:1-10; Luke 14:25-35

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)

Today … Revelation 19’s fourfold Hallelujah … finally! The word “Hallelujah” is a transliteration of a Hebrew word that means, “Praise Yah[weh]!” It is an exuberant exclamation of worship that courses through the Book of Psalms. It especially marks the times when Israel celebrates Yahweh as King (e.g., Psalms 96 & 98). And there is a glorious clustering of “Hallelujah” psalms at the end of the Book of Psalms, as though Israel’s hymnbook were forecasting the end of time, when Yahweh will be exalted as King of the whole earth— when Yahweh “lifts up those who are bowed down,” when Yahweh “adorns the humble with victory,” and when it’s finally time to “Let everything that has breath praise Yahweh! Hallelujah!” (Psalm 146:8; 149:4; 150:6). 

It is surprising to many readers of the Bible to discover that the word occurs in the New Testament only four times—and all of them are in today’s passage almost at the end of the New Testament. No “Hallelujahs” in the narratives of Jesus’s birth; nor at his baptism, nor at any of his miracles or teachings—not even at his resurrection. It’s almost as though the New Testament holds back its fourfold “Hallelujah,” waiting for today’s moment. 

The New Testament celebrates with its sole “Hallelujahs” the culmination of the story of two women: the destruction of “the great whore,” and the presentation of “the bride” for “the marriage supper of the Lamb.” Two things are worth the wait: the end of everything that corrupts and destroys humankind, and the consummation of the love of the Divine Husband for his Bride. These are the things that make John the Revelator go all George Frideric Handel on us: “Alleluia: for the Lord God omnipotent reigneth.”

The marriage arc. “And I will take you for my wife forever…” — Hosea 2:19. Our readings in the Daily Office the past few months have provided us ample opportunity to explore the theme of God as husband and Israel as bride, or Christ as husband and the Church as bride. This portrait is one of the most powerful of all the many images the Bible provides for the way God establishes a relationship between himself and us. 

It is small wonder that historically, both for Jews and Christians, marriage has taken on a “sacramental cast”—that is, every marriage has the potential for pointing beyond itself to our union with God. In Jewish practice, Song of Songs is Shabbat evening reading. And Christian weddings often cite Paul’s reference to human marriage as a “mystery” of something beyond itself: “It signifies to us the mystery of the union between Christ and his Church, and Holy Scripture commends it to be honored among all people” (Book of Common Prayer, p. 423, drawing on Ephesians 5:32). 

From celibate mystics to married couples with children, believers have clung tenaciously to the sacramental nature of marriage as being vital to the church’s identity and witness. At its heart, the analogy between a husband and a wife becoming “one flesh” provides each of us with the heart-pounding and enthralling possibility of seeing ourselves as someone Christ loves personally and passionately. 

The righteous deeds of the saints. “’…his bride has made herself ready; to her it has been granted to be clothed with fine linen, bright and pure’ — for the fine linen is the righteous deeds of the saints. — Revelation 19:7b-8. 

Most Christians I know are guilt-ridden. They’re pretty sure that there’s nothing about their lives that is praiseworthy or commendable. And, to be sure, the Bible is clear that none of us merits eternal life. It’s a gift, pure and simple: “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God; they are now justified freely by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus” (Romans 3:23-24). True enough. And, thanks be, for Jesus’s dying and rising, by which we are forgiven and made new. 

Beyond that, when we consider the church, it’s hard for most of us, I think, to imagine that the church as we know it measures up to the picture of its being ready to be given “fine linen” because of “the righteous deeds of the saints.” It’s hard for any of us, I suppose, to imagine that the church we experience approximates what Paul envisions when he says it is his goal to present the church “as a chaste virgin to Christ” (2 Corinthians 11:2). 

God’s perspective, however, seems to be different. When he looks at us, and when he looks at the church, he sees not so much what is, but what shall be. And then when he considers the paltry offerings we make of our lives, he sees not paltriness, but plenitude—not deficiency, but abundance. I’ve been helped a lot—in my thinking about myself and about the church—by these words from John Calvin:

God’s children are pleasing and lovable to him, since he sees in them the marks and features of his own countenance. For we have elsewhere taught that regeneration is a renewal of the divine image in us. Since, therefore, wherever God contemplates his own face, he both rightly loves it and holds it in honor, it is said with good reason that the lives of believers, framed to holiness and righteousness, are pleasing to him. (Institutes 3.17.5)

Therefore, as we ourselves, when we have been engrafted in Christ, are righteous in God’s sight because our iniquities are covered by Christ’s sinlessness, so our works are righteous and are thus regarded because whatever fault is otherwise in them is buried in Christ’s purity, and is not charged to our account. Accordingly, we can deservedly say that by faith alone not only we ourselves but our works as well are justified. (Institutes 3.17.10) 

May you—his dear child and beloved member of the bride of Christ—enjoy a confident sense of God’s favor, through Christ our Lord.

Be blessed this day, 

Reggie Kidd+

Setting Things Right - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Monday • 11/11/2024 •

Proper 27

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 80; Joel 1:1-13; Revelation 18:15-24; Luke 14:12-24

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’s readings from Joel and Revelation and Luke combine to reckon with the sadness of the human condition, but then to set our eyes and our hearts on God’s promise finally to set all things to right and to host us at history’s final banquet. 

Joel 1:1-13. To a farmer there can hardly be anything more horrific than invasion by an army of locusts. There’s no defense. There’s a singular result: total wreckage, and the loss of a season’s worth of labor. The prophet Joel surveys the wake of just such an attack. He may very well have witnessed ransacking by actual locusts at some point in his lifetime. But the locusts serve as a metaphor, or a symbol, of the way invading armies have plundered and pillaged his homeland: “For a nation has invaded my land, powerful and innumerable” (Joel 1:6).

There’s no way to date Joel’s writings exactly. We’re not told under what king he served. What’s so powerful about Joel’s graphic vision of a land blighted by locusts is that it could have applied after either of the invasions—Israel in the north by the Assyrians, or Judah in the south by the Babylonians. In each case, everything has been leveled. Everything that has made the Promised Land the Promised Land has been taken. 

And so, the prophet calls, in the first place, simply for lament. Everybody—from drunkard to virgin, from priest to vinedresser— needs to grieve. People can’t even worship aright: “Grain offering and drink offering are withheld (there being no crops left!) from the house of God.” All they can do in the moment is grieve. 

Eventually, Joel will call for repentance, and then he will make promises of an extraordinary future. But first, he says: “Put on sackcloth and lament…” (Joel 1:13). 

We live in not dissimilar days. We’ve seen a locust-like coronavirus devastate the earth, emptying city streets and filling hospital emergency rooms. At the same time, a locust-like plague of discontentment and grievance has beset the hearts of citizens of the U.S., whether on the left or the right. Internationally, invading armies eerily evoke Joel’s complaint: “For a nation has invaded my land, powerful and innumerable … The fields are devastated, the ground mourns” (Joel 1:6a,10a). And I believe the first thing to do is simply to let the sadness settle in. 

Revelation 18:15-24. Eventually, all will be set to rights: that’s what the Book of Revelation wants us to know. And setting to rights will entail the bringing down of every destructive and defiling impulse that has ever been let loose against the human race. No more war. No more abuse. No more racism. No more slights or insults. “Babylon” will fall. Ultimately, even nature itself will be brought back into equilibrium, with chapter 21’s “new heaven and new earth.” No more killer diseases, no more sickness of any sort. No more dying, no more hurricanes or earthquakes or devastating fires. But the hinge of it all, the fulcrum, will be the elimination from among humans of every corrupting influence. “Babylon” will fall. As Paul puts it: all of creation will be set free from its corruption with the redemption of the human race (Romans 8:19-21). 

And once “the great whore” Babylon has fallen, the stage will be set for Revelation 19’s wedding feast of the Bride (tomorrow’s reading).  

Luke 14:12-24. “Blessed is anyone who will eat bread in the kingdom of God” — Luke 14:15. An invitation to that banquet is to be prized above any invitation you might receive, ever. And yet, inconceivably, it is an invitation that too many of us are inclined to put in the trash can: “But they all alike began to make excuses.” There’s land to survey, there are oxen to yoke, there’s a new marriage to begin. (I just bought a car. I just got a new job. We’re heading out on our honeymoon...) 

It’s possible to have your field of vision so filled with this life’s possibilities that you miss life’s number one possibility: a place at the Table of the Feast of God. Jesus is not saying don’t take the job, or don’t commit to the marriage. But he is saying that it’s wise to hold all these things with a loose grip, because a great day is coming. “The poor, the crippled, the blind, and the lame” … people from “the roads and lanes” will fill God’s house—and there will be a place there for you and for me, if only we have prepared ourselves to say “Yes!” when the invitation comes. 

Be blessed this day, 

Reggie Kidd+

To Guard and Cherish Our Relationships - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Friday • 11/8/2024 •

Proper 26

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 69; Song of Songs 8:8-14; Revelation 17:1-18; Luke 13:31-35 

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) 

For our Old Testament reading the past two weeks and this week, I am treating the Song of Songs instead of the lectionary’s Ecclesiasticus. Together, I hope we have been discovering or rediscovering some of the power of this enchanting “Best of Songs.” Today’s portion is Song of Songs 8:8–14.  

Wrapping up Song of Songs. Let me explain why I inserted a study of Song of Songs into the cycle of Daily Office readings. For me, the Catholic philosopher Peter Kreeft added a certain sparkle to the trilogy of Old Testaments writings (Ecclesiastes, Job, and Song of Songs) when, in his little book Three Philosophies of Life, he compared them to the three sections of Dante’s Divine Comedy.  

Ecclesiastes shows us how life without God is hell on earth—the Inferno. Job shows us that the path of salvation and of suffering are one and the same—the Purgatorio. Song of Songs shows us that God made us for joyous intimacy—the Paradiso.  

It so happens that in this year’s cycle of Old Testament readings, the Daily Office has taken us through Ecclesiastes and Job, studies in seeing that life is a dead end without God, and in learning how God uses suffering to enable us to know him more deeply. I noticed, thanks to Professor Kreeft, that there was an omission in the readings: despite its historical importance to the church (not to mention the synagogue), the Song of Songs is excluded from the Daily Office. We were being deprived, I concluded, of what Paul Harvey might have called “the rest of the story,” namely, this precious “best of songs” that acknowledges what we all know—that we are desperate for love—and, what we need to learn: “the flame of Yah” will not disappoint.

As we leave our musings over this “best of songs”, I pray for you now exactly what I prayed three weeks ago when we began: 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.  

With today’s verses, our singers do their own bit of wrapping up: “Take care of the ‘little sisters’ who are coming along after you,” they say (Song of Songs 8:8-10). “Ignore distractions along the path to a love that is exclusive and therefore true,” they implore (Song of Songs 8:11-12); And finally, they urge us to be watchful and to pray, “Make haste, my beloved…” (Song of Songs 8:13-14). Maranatha! Come quickly, Lord, and save! 

Revelation. Speaking of “come quickly, Lord,” we leave the Old Testament’s version of God’s Love Story, to swing into the last few days of the New Testament’s version of the Love Story. First, in Revelation 17, we must meet the story’s “other woman,” the whore of Babylon.  

Part of the Bible’s overarching story line points to two different paths to fulfilling the mandate God gives to Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden: “fill the earth and subdue it” (Genesis 1:28). One is a path of faith, and the other of faithlessness. Genesis chapter four provides the opening manifestation of the “two ways.” Enoch, son of the faithless murderer Cain, builds the first city, which he names after himself (Genesis 4:17). (Perhaps there’s a message in that fact alone.) In this line of unbelief flourish the great gifts of culture-building. of “filling the earth and subduing it”: animal husbandry, music, and manufacturing (Genesis 4:20-22). Meanwhile, in the line of the believing Seth (the murdered Abel’s replacement) flows just one gift: the ability “to invoke the name of Yahweh”—that is, to relate to God by name (Genesis 4:25).  

Two tracks—two possibilities—for human existence are hereby laid down. Israel’s mission, in the midst of faithless nations, is to incubate and nourish a redemptive vision of culture-building. That is why Yahweh calls these descendants of Seth into covenant with himself, and to “be my treasured possession out of all the peoples. Indeed, the whole earth is mine, but you shall be for me a priestly kingdom and a holy nation” (Exodus 19:5-6).  

The 5th century AD North African theologian Augustine will name the two paths the “City of Man” and the “City of God.” In the Book of Revelation, they take the form of the “whore of Babylon” and the “bride of Christ.” By the end of the Book of Revelation, God will perfect the beautification of the Bride of Christ (Revelation 19:7-10), and bring about a New Jerusalem on a new earth under new heavens (Revelation 21-22). 

In the meantime, though, God must dispatch the “whore of Babylon,” the embodiment of a faithless and disobedient humanity’s project of “filling the earth and subduing it”—in a word, Augustine’s “City of Man.” Students of the Book of Revelation have struggled to identify the Babylon to which John refers. To some, the “whore” looks like literal Babylon in Assyria. To some, her seven hills suggest that Babylon is Rome (17:9). To others, the fact that Revelation refers to “the great city” as the place where Jesus was killed means that “Babylon” is Jerusalem (11:8). I think it’s most likely that John’s “Babylon” is intended to resonate with each of these cities. But in the end, the whoring “Babylon” is a spiritual reality: a composite for the entirety of the human project that has sought to build civilization without God, and has been proven to be rapine, exploitative, and blasphemous. To turn to another biblical image: Babylon, “the great whore” is a reprised—and final—Tower of Babel that must be felled. Stay tuned.  

Luke. “…as a hen gathers her brood under her wings…” — Luke 13:34. As I noted a few months ago when we encountered this image in Matthew’s gospel, it’s significant that Jesus meets his contemporaries’ rejection of him not with anger, but with sadness: “Jerusalem, Jerusalem…! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing.” He laments their repudiation, even while he knows its outcome will be good: the salvation of the world. And he looks to the day when the unfolding sadness will be turned to joy, when his countryfolk will confess: “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.” Blessed, indeed, is he… 

Be blessed this day,  

Reggie Kidd+ 

Where Love Proved Strong - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Thursday • 11/7/2024 •

Proper 26

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 71; Song of Songs 8:6-7; Revelation 16:12-21; Luke 13:18-30 

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) 

For our Old Testament reading the past two weeks and this week, I am treating the Song of Songs instead of the lectionary’s Ecclesiasticus. Together, I hope we are discovering or rediscovering some of the elegance of this enchanting “Best of Songs.” Today’s portion is Song of Songs 8:6–7.  

I noted at the beginning of our meditations on Song of Songs that this “best of songs” is a song about yearning for love. We’ve seen how elusive love can be, and how dedicated our “Solomon” and our “Shulammite” are to finding each other and to satisfying each other’s desire for love.  

In something of a climax, the Song—and we must remember that Song of Songs is a song—extols love itself. Song of Songs 8:6-7 marks a zenith, not just because its topic is the very love that has drawn our couple together, but because this couplet includes the singular mention of God’s name. Here is the more accurate rendering of the last phrase of 8:6, where jealous love is said to be “a flame of Yahweh himself” (8:6d). This song is “the best of songs” because, finally, it extols the God who is love.  

“Set me as a seal…” — Song of Songs 8:6a. A seal is the way, especially in societies where literacy was not universal, by which one person would certify their identity. We are not sure who is speaking in these verses—some commentators think it’s the Bride, others that it’s the Groom. It doesn’t matter, because either could be expressing this desire. When I ask you to take me “as a seal (hanging as a pendant around your neck) over your heart,” I commit myself to adapting my thoughts and attitudes and expressions to you; and to do so in such a complete way that when people see and hear me, they see and hear you. Scripture speaks elsewhere of being “one flesh” — that is, two people with a common identity. That is our Bride and her Groom.  

This kind of love becomes what Charles Williams (Christian novelist and “Inklings” member) calls “coinherence”: something like a mutual indwelling. And to a Christian sensibility, coinherence is possible because, and only because, it is a sharing in the inner life of the Triune God. Jesus promised his disciples: “…you will know that I am in the Father and you in me, and I in you” (John 14:20). As Williams’s fellow Inkling C. S. Lewis put it, our Heavenly Father wishes to absorb us into his life without devouring us; he “wants a world full of beings united to Him but still distinct.” Such is the intimacy our “Solomon” and our “Shulammite” desire for and in each other. Such is the mystery of the bond between Christ and his Bride (Ephesians 5:32). Such is the aspiration, at least, of a man and a woman when they pledge their lives in the bond of marriage.  May God grant grace.  

“For love is strong as Death…” — Song of Songs 8:6b. Our loving couple rhapsodize about love being stronger than death. They liken love to a fire no amount of water can put out, and they claim their love is so much beyond price that money can’t sully it. Experience teaches, however, that such rhapsodizing feels like a leap into unbridled romanticism—like so many songs from the youth culture of my teenage years. Wedding services that may even include today’s verses about love being as strong as death may nonetheless stipulate that the vows taken are: “till death do us part.” Love can flame out—with or without external flooding. And finances have shipwrecked countless marriages.  

But then, notice the capital “D” in Death as I’ve quoted it above. Here’s the Jerusalem Bible’s rendering of Song of Songs 8:6-7. I commend it to you:  

6 For love is strong as Death 
jealousy relentless as Sheol. 
The flash of it is a flash of fire, 
a flame of Yahweh himself. 
7 Love no flood can quench, 
no torrents drown. 
Were a man to offer all the wealth of his house to buy love,  
contempt is all he would purchase.  

This passage is brimming with theological meaning. In Canaanite religion “Death” (Mot) is the force that the pagan god Baal fought against. Sheol is the place inhabited by spirits entrapped by death. And the twice appearing word “flash” could have been capitalized too as “Flash,” because it is Resep, the name of the Canaanite god of pestilence (per Jenson). The Old Testament treats Yahweh as the one who delivers, not just from the torrential flood of the Red Sea, but from cosmic watery chaos (Psalm 93:3-4; Habakkuk 3:8,15). And in the biblical world, money isn’t just money, it is Mammon, the worship of which is idolatry.  

Intriguingly, the last phrase of verse six includes the single mention of God—and that, by his personal name—in the entire Song: more precisely, “a flame of Yah.” It’s mystifying to me that most translations bury the reference to Yahweh. The verse invokes as guarantor of love’s strength the God who has revealed himself in Exodus 3 in a burning bush as Deliverer (“I AM THAT I AM,” from which “Yahweh” derives), who loves his people for no other reason than that “love” is who he is (Exodus 34; Deuteronomy 7), whose name is “Jealous” (Exodus 34:14), and who therefore is “a consuming fire” (Deuteronomy 4:24; Hebrews 12:29). The God of the Bible is a consuming fire that comes against all that would destroy the creation he loves, and above all, the humans he has lovingly fashioned to bear his image and to steward and tend his creation.  

There is, therefore, a place where love proved strong as Death: the Cross and Empty Tomb of Jesus Christ. It is in Jesus (whose name means “Yahweh saves”) that Yahweh takes on and defeats the enemies of his people: death, disease, chaos, and cupidity. Jesus is God’s jealously protective love. It is to him that the Song of Songs elegantly, exquisitely, and evocatively points. 

And that, to offer one final point, is why it is so important to choose not to be among the citizens of Babylon who drink “the wine cup of the fury of his wrath” (Revelation 16:19), but, instead, to be a part of the Bride of Christ and to prepare to “feast in the kingdom of God” (Luke 13:29 Jerusalem Bible). May you choose wisely. 

Be blessed this day, 

Reggie Kidd+ 

In God's Own Time - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Wednesday • 11/6/2024 •

Proper 26

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 72; Song of Songs 8:1-5; Revelation 16:1-11; Luke 13:10-17 

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

For our Old Testament reading the past two weeks and this week, I am treating the Song of Songs instead of the lectionary’s Ecclesiasticus (Wisdom of Ben Sirach). Together, I hope we are discovering or rediscovering some of the beauty of this enchanting “Best of Songs.” Today’s portion is Song of Songs 8:1–5.  

Song of Songs: up from the wilderness. It is difficult to detect a single line of thought running through today’s verses in Song of Songs—but I think it’s there. The first three verses read to me as though our bride is so delighted in the company of her bridegroom that her only regret is that she could not have known him from birth, sharing, as though she were his sister, all of life’s journey. But then, in verse four, she acknowledges that love comes in its own time.  

The first part of verse five is quite striking. It has to remind us of the analogy of the love between this bride and her groom, on the one hand, and between Israel and her Lord, on the other. The opening words are identical to the earlier question: “Who is she coming from the wilderness, like a column of smoke?” (Song of Songs 3:6). Back in chapter three, the bride, advancing to her wedding, was being likened to Israel being accompanied by the Shekinah presence. Here in chapter eight, the question concludes differently: “Who is she coming from the wilderness, leaning upon her beloved?” (8:5, emphasis mine). There (chapter 3) the wedding was being anticipated. Here (chapter 8) the wedding has taken place, and we are witnessing the couple’s procession arm in arm.  

It is perhaps for this reason (contemplating the post-wedding procession) that the Song’s bride’s thoughts turn to her “awakening” her groom “under the apple tree”—a euphemism for the same sort of love-making that had brought them into existence in the first place (thus, the seemingly curious description of the apple tree as the groom’s mother’s place of labor or conception, depending on the commentator).   

While the details of the story may be challenging to tease out, the significance for our relationship with the Lord is not. The Jewish apostle Paul is keenly aware of the Old Testament’s image of the Lord marrying his people to himself. Because he sees Christ as doing just that, Paul explains that our being free from the law means we are free to “marry another”: “…you have died to the law through the body of Christ, so that you may belong to another, to him who has been raised from the dead in order that we may bear fruit for God” (Romans 7:3-4).  

We are the “she” who is coming from the wilderness, leaning on her Beloved. We know him intimately and love him dearly, and he knows us intimately and loves us dearly. As we yield to communion with him—in prayer, in study, in worship, in partaking of the Sacraments, in seeking and serving Christ in all persons—we find that we “bear fruit for God.” Amen. Let it be so! 

Revelation: the seven bowls. The Book of Revelation moves toward a final consummation in which there is confirmation and perfection of all that is beautiful and good, and in which there is condemnation and the undoing of all that is ugly and evil. Today’s verses open the chapter of “the seven bowls of the wrath of God” (Revelation 16:1). Throughout the course of his book, John is given visions outlining a remarkable progress toward final judgment. There had been:  

• seven seals preparing for judgment (Revelation 6),  

• followed by seven trumpets warning of judgment (Revelation 8–9), and now  

• seven bowls of judgment itself being poured out (Revelation 16).  

As the visions transition from seals of preparation to trumpets of warning to bowls of the outpouring of judgment itself, there has been a progression. Two examples: the second seal had said civil strife was coming (6:3-4), the second trumpet had warned that a third of the sea would turn to blood (8:8-9), and at the second bowl of judgment all the sea becomes blood and “every living thing in the sea died” (16:3). In addition, the third seal had prophesied famine (6:5-6), the third trumpet had warned that a third of the waters would become poisonous and many would die (8:10-11), and now the judgment itself is sweeping: “The third angel poured his bowl into the rivers and the springs of water, and they became blood” (16:4).  

When reading the Book of Revelation, it’s always important to keep the end of the story in view. We need not be surprised and discouraged if evil increases, going from bad to worse. The intensification of the diabolical is only the death throes of one who received a mortal blow on the cross—and who will, in God’s own time—be dispatched with one final, definitive stroke at Christ’s return. We know the story ends well, because each cycle concerning judgment—the seals and the trumpets and the bowls—concludes with a note of victory:  

• the seven seals close with a period of silence in heaven while the prayers of the saints below and the saints above combine to intercede for final justice on the earth (8:1-5);  

• the seven trumpets introduce a song in celebration of the reign of God (11:15-19); and  

• the seven bowls of judgment will yield (as we will see tomorrow) the judgment of Babylon (16:17-21).  

No matter how bad it looks, the people of the Lamb will overcome. No matter how great the temptation to despair, the Bride will be brought through in radiant glory. Amen. Let it be so! 

Luke: a daughter of Abraham. Luke provides a mini-portrait of all of us who belong to the Lamb and are part of his Bride. This “woman with a spirit that had crippled her for eighteen years … [who] was bent over and was quite unable to stand up straight” (Luke 13:11) is a picture of all of us who find ourselves crushed and deformed in soul (if not in body) by a power beyond our control. At the word of Jesus, this woman is suddenly able to stand erect—one of the most distinguishing marks of human dignity. And with no prompting at all, “she began praising God”—one of the most distinguishing marks of life unmarred by Eden’s fall. Here, truly, is a “daughter of Abraham.” Here, indeed, is a precursor of the Bride of Christ. Amen. Let it be so! 

Be blessed this day,  

Reggie Kidd+ 

His Desire Is for Me - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Tuesday • 11/5/2024 •

Proper 26

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 61; Psalm 62; Song of Songs 7:1-13; Revelation 14:14–5:8; Luke 13:1-9 

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

For our Old Testament reading the past two weeks and this week, I am treating the Song of Songs instead of the lectionary’s Ecclesiasticus. Together, I hope we are discovering or rediscovering some of the graces of this enchanting “Best of Songs.” Today’s portion is Song of Songs 7:1–13.

The redemption of desire. Our “Solomon’s” loving gaze takes in the whole of his “Shulammite’s” form, from bottom to top, perhaps even, as some commentators suggest, as she accepts the earlier invitation to dance (but for him, and him alone). He exults in her every feature, from sandaled feet to captivating tresses, with tantalizing stops along the way: her shapely thighs, her inviting midsection, her charming breasts, and her regal head and face. It is all very straightforward, and, because the couple’s love is bounded by covenant, it is also altogether pure. Following her description of him in the previous chapter (6:4-7), this, his second graphic description of her (see 4:1-7), is a part of the expression of a shared surrender of two lives that have become “one flesh.” 

A telling detail lies in the distinctive way she completes the thought “I am my beloved’s…” (the third appearance of that line in Song of Songs; see 2:16; 6:3). This time she follows with, “…and his desire is for me” (Song of Songs 7:10). It is one more signal of our couple’s rediscovering Eden. This use of the term “desire” (Heb teshuqah) is the third of only three times that this particular word for “desire” appears in the Hebrew Bible. And it cannot, in my view, be accidental.  

One mark of the curse imposed after the Fall in Eden is that the woman’s “desire” (Heb teshuqah) for her husband will be answered, not by mutuality, but by power: “he will rule over you” (Genesis 3:16). Then, outside the locked gates of Eden, in the hope of averting Cain’s ill treatment of his brother Abel, the Lord warns Cain that “sin is lurking at the door; its desire (Heb teshuqah) is for you, but you must master it” (Genesis 4:7). In both cases, “desire” is sin-laden: people will find longings rebuffed by power, and relationships will be shattered by sin as a pernicious personified power.  

But the Bible can’t leave it there. The couple whose love the Song of Songs explores is re-entering an Eden of sorts. By the end of this chapter, she invites him to yet another scene for love-making that is redolent with Eden imagery: blossoming grape vines, blooming pomegranates, fragrant mandrakes, and “all choice fruits” (7:12-13). What makes the entire scene an anticipation of a re-Edenized cosmos is her declaration that, “… his desire (Heb teshuqah) is for me.” Here, in a new Eden, he answers her desire with a desire of his own. The desire that overpowers in the Song of Songs is not relationship-destroying sin, but life-giving love: “Eat, friends, drink, and be drunk with love” (5:1; and see also 2:5; 4:9). At last, man and woman meet in love’s garden as equals and partners. They come together for each other’s flourishing and delight.  

A theological hint of love’s incarnation. Jewish interpreters long ago detected theological hints in the bride’s and the groom’s respective descriptions in chapters six and seven. She describes his statuesque splendor “from above to below,” from golden head to alabaster legs (5:10-15). He describes her undulating loveliness “from below to above,” from sandaled feet to flowing locks (7:1-5). God, so the inference goes, in becoming husband to his people, descends from “high to low” in order to raise us up from “low to high,” that we might meet as “friends”: “This is my beloved, and this is my friend, O daughters of Jerusalem” (Song of Songs 5:16c). Says Jewish commentator Michael Fishbane: “This account also conveys messianic hope. Whereas God moves from transcendence to immanence, in response to Israel’s beckoning love, the people are promised ascendance and restoration.”  

Christians insist that the picture has come into clear focus now that God’s love has become incarnate, now that the Divine Husband literally has come “from above to below” to raise his bride “from below to above.” Through the prophet Ezekiel, God describes his people—his bride—as having become lewd, defiled, and unworthy (see Ezekiel 16). She has made herself utterly undesirable: cast to the side of the road due to her whorings, abominations, and wickedness.  

But now, because of God’s forgiveness and redemption through Jesus Christ, the Bride has come to know definitively that “his desire is for me.” Ther church knows that “Christ loved [her] and gave himself up for her, in order to make her holy by cleansing her with the washing of water by the word, so as to present the church to himself in splendor, without a spot or wrinkle or anything of the kind, yes, so that she may be holy and without blemish” (Ephesians 6:26-27).  Not at all unlike the female lover in the Song of Songs, the church confesses that she belongs to her Beloved, and she rejoices that her Beloved’s desire is for her. 

A note on physicality in Song of Songs. As we near the end of our study of this “best of songs” in praise of human love, it seems a word about God’s delight in physicality is in order. The Bible has no patience with a bifurcated spirituality, a splitting of reality into “good” spirituality and “evil” physicality. The Bible’s Lord is maker of all of heaven and all of earth. And though the earth he loves has come, for a time, under the alien domination of sin and evil and death, the Bible’s Lord has not surrendered his creation to those forces. The entire point of the incarnation is that Yahweh is intent upon redeeming and reclaiming all of created reality—his created reality. Mutually joyous intimacy, spiritual and physical, between a husband and wife provides the richest of pictures of the mystery of God’s own commitment to enfold us—fallen creatures though we now are—into the eternal intimacy of the triune life.  

So, here’s to our ancient couple’s delight in one another—body and soul. And here’s to the profound tone-poem they have left us for enjoying the Divine Romance.  

Be blessed this day, 

Reggie Kidd+ 

An Exclusive Love - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Monday • 11/4/2024 •

Proper 26

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 56; Psalm 57; Psalm 58; Song of Songs 6:1-13; Revelation 14:1-13; Luke 12:49-59 

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 the past two weeks and this week, I am treating the Song of Songs instead of the lectionary’s Ecclesiasticus. Together, I hope we are discovering or rediscovering the wonder of this enchanting “Best of Songs.” Today’s portion is Song of Songs 6:1–13.  

Song of Songs. “I am my beloved’s and my beloved is mine” — Song of Songs 6:3. This is not first time this phrase has come up in Song of Songs, and is seemingly an intentional evoking of the covenant relationship between Yahweh and his people: “I will be your God and you will be my people.” The Song explores an analogy between that relationship and the covenant bond between husband and wife. Earlier, in Song of Songs 2:16, the woman uses this phrase to express her joy at the arrival of her beloved who “leaped mountains” and “bounded hills” to come to her. There the point was to stress the couple’s delight in each other. Here in chapter 6, there seem to be threats to the relationship, and the phrase clarifies the exclusive love that the man and the woman have for each other. It’s as though she were saying here, “I am my beloved’s (and nobody else’s) and my beloved is mine (and nobody else’s).”  

It is difficult to determine just what the threats to their relationship are. But they are there. Some commentators think the chorus of women who ask about the whereabouts of the beloved are contesting the strength of the bond between lover and beloved, and are themselves trying to become competitors for his affections (6:1). The female lover responds: I’m his, and he’s mine. Back off! 

Then the male lover, or husband, chimes in. He praises, once again, the loveliness of his wife, and attests that though there be queens and concubines and “maidens without number” that could avert his eyes and heart, there is only one woman for him: the “Shulammite” (Song of Songs 6:8,13). Interpreters have puzzled over the term “Shulammite.” I think the best explanation is that it is a feminine form of “Solomon.” Worthy of consideration is Jenson’s suggestion: “Thus, just as elsewhere the Song calls the male lover Solomon, since every male lover is a great king, so here the female lover is a female Solomon, since every female lover is a great queen.”  

Another threat to the relationship lies in the urging of a male chorus that the Shulammite “return, that we may look upon you”—specifically, that she dance for them, putting her femininity on display (Song of Songs 6:13). The last half of verse thirteen is her demurral: “Why should you look upon the Shulammite (i.e., me), as upon a dance before two armies?”  

Despite the complex imagery and the difficulty in discerning the details of the story line of the love relationship between the man and the woman, the theological takeaway from this chapter is straightforward. God’s design for love between a man and a woman is one of exclusive love, desire, and commitment— and that, precisely because the love between Yahweh and Israel in the Old Testament (updated to Christ and the Church in the New Testament) is one of exclusive love, desire, and commitment.  

Revelation. Today’s reading in Revelation underscores the point that our love for the Lord is to be exclusive. So jealous is Christ for the love of his Bride that Babylon, who “has made all nations drink of the wine of God’s wrath,” must fall. Babylon seduces with deceptive charms: blasphemy and excessive luxury—Revelation 17:3-6; 18:3-19. Against her wiles and her persecutions, the saints must endure, “keep the commandments of God, and hold fast the faith of Jesus” (Revelation 14:12). And those who have “been redeemed from the earth,” and who “have not defiled themselves with women” (Revelation 14:4, which I take to be not literal, but metaphorical of those who resist Babylon’s temptations to blasphemy and luxury) find themselves playing harps (presumably joyfully!) and singing a “new song” (presumably exuberantly!) before the throne of God! Those who keep themselves as part of Christ’s pure Bride know joy and exuberance—exactly like the bride of Song of Songs.  

Luke. In its own way, today’s reading in Luke makes a similar point. The cost to Heaven’s Groom for winning to himself a pure Bride was exorbitant. It entailed the baptism of Christ’s death. And during his ministry on earth, anticipation of that baptism weighed on our fully-human-and-fully-divine Savior mightily: “I have a baptism with which to be baptized and what stress I am under until it is accomplished” (Luke 12:50). Because his jealous love is driving him to such lengths, this one whose mission is at bottom one of peace (Luke 2:14) declares war on all that defiles and degrades his bride: “Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division!” And his coming demands we make a choice—for his love, or against it. May you and I wisely “interpret the present time,” and, like the bride in Song of Songs, surrender to him all of our love, all of our desire, and all of our commitment.   

Be blessed this day,  

Reggie Kidd+ 

His Image I Will Bear - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Friday • 11/1/2024 •

Proper 25

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 40; Psalm 54; Song of Songs 5:9-16; Revelation 13:1-10 (and Saturday’s Revelation 13:11-18); Luke 12:13-31

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)

For our Old Testament reading last week, this week, and the next, 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 the wonder of this “Best of Songs.” Today’s portion is Song of Songs 5:2–8. 

Song of Songs. Challenged with the question, “What makes your Beloved so special?”, the Bride declares that her Beloved is “the chiefest among ten thousand” (Song of Songs 5:10b KJV). Just as the Bridegroom earlier had described the Bride’s features from her face down to her neck and then to her breasts, so the Bride describes her Bridegroom in similar sequence: “his head...his eyes...his cheeks...his lips….” She continues to describe “his arms...his body...his legs….” Once again, it is worth taking time to read this slowly and appreciate the lovely lyrical quality of the Bride’s delight in, and love for, her Bridegroom.  (For a possible real-world, but lesser analogy, one might imagine a bride in a later century trying to describe her lover in terms of the physical perfection of Michelangelo’s David. With thanks to commentator Robert Jenson for this suggestion.) 

The Bride and the Bridegroom exult in the loveliness each sees in the other. There is an innocence in the joy with which they celebrate their love and their delight in one another’s physicality.  Eden exists! To each other, they are perfect. He to her: “There is no flaw in you” (4:7). She of him: “All of him is delightful” (5:16b). 

On the human plane, one thing to notice is that husband and wife meet at the level of mutuality—they experience each other as “sister” and “brother,” and she calls him “friend” (4:9,10,12; 5:1,2,16; later, 8:1). 

On the divine-human plane, the thing to notice is that for Christians, God’s incarnation in his Son brings an elevation that is perhaps more accessible to hymnody than to formal theology:

What a friend we have in Jesus, all our sins and griefs to bear…

Jesus, what a friend for sinners, Jesus lover of my soul…

Less well-known, perhaps, are the lyrics of poet Fanny Crosby, whose physical blindness sometimes seems to make her view of spiritual truths all the more accurate. “Seeing” her Savior and Lord Jesus in today’s verses, she writes: 

He’s the Chief among ten thousand, And the fairest of the fair;
I shall see Him in His beauty, And His image I shall bear.

Revelation. By contrast, what vile ugliness confronts us in Revelation 13! The dragon (Satan) produces a first beast (dubbed in John’s epistles “antichrist”—1 John 2:18,22; 2 John 7) whose career is a mocking inversion of Christ’s (Revelation 13:12,14), and a second beast (dubbed in 1 John “the spirit of antichrist”—1 John 4:3) whose career is a mocking inversion of the life-giving Spirit (Revelation 13:12-15). Together the dragon and the two beasts form a kind of counter trinity, set against the true Three-in-One. 

Two points I wish to make:

First, while both Revelation and John’s epistles do seem to point to a future day in which there will be an explosion of evil against “the Lamb and his people,” John also indicates that the entire era of the church’s existence is characterized as “the persecution and the kingdom and the patient endurance” (Revelation 1:9). Already in John’s day, he could point to many “antichrists” (1 John 2:18), that is, to many figures who stand against Christ, even offering themselves as substitute-Christs (for “substitute” is one of the meanings for the “anti-” in “antichrist”). And already in John’s day, he detects the working of the “spirit of antichrist,” animating false teaching within the church and persecution from without. We should not be shocked or discouraged if we sense “antichrist” and “the spirit of antichrist” around us in our own day as well. 

That said, we should not miss the fact that the power of these evil beings is limited (note the repeated refrain, “it was allowed” and “it was given authority”—e.g., 13:5,7,15). We know the end of the story. We know that this pathetic, if powerfully destructive, rebellion is doomed. We win. 

Luke. In the face of all that is still evil in the world, God is preparing his Church for her wedding day. That fact makes it all the more imperative that we heed Jesus’s teaching from today’s gospel reading that we not allow ourselves a short-sighted, “your-best-life-now” preoccupation with money and bigger things and better stuff (larger and larger barns). And further, that we learn the peace and confidence that come from “considering the lilies” and trusting both ourselves, and our destinies, to the Lord’s tender, beautifying care. 

Be blessed this day, 

Reggie Kidd+ 

Our Heavenly Lover Captures Our Hearts for All Time - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Thursday • 10/31/2024 •

Proper 25

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 50; Song of Songs 5:2-8; Revelation 12:7-17; Luke 11:53–12:12 

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)

For our Old Testament reading last week, this week, and the next, 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 the wonder of this “Best of Songs.” Today’s portion is Song of Songs 5:2–8. 

Looking for love in all the wrong places. Today’s verses from the first half of Song of Songs chapter five form a matched set with those from the first half of chapter three. Both sets of verses have a dreamlike aura about them. In both sets, our female singer wanders nighttime streets seeking her lost lover. This time, his absence is due to her slow response to his overtures. Regretting her reticence at intimacy, she rashly rushes out into city streets in the middle of the night. As before, she is met by the city’s “sentinels” or “watchmen” or “guardians” (Hebrew shomerim). Unlike last time when the “guardians” left her in peace, this time, they rough her up. As though she were a compromised woman, they strip her of her mantle, and beat her. The vignette ends with her appealing to the “daughters of Jerusalem” to find her beloved and tell him: “I am faint with love.”

As with the previous reverie about a nighttime search for love, the story itself reads more like a dream—in this case, a bad dream—than a recollection. And its deeper meaning for the recorder of the song and for those who deemed it worthy of inclusion in the canon is probably to be found in its theological symbolism. As commentator Robert W. Jenson crisply puts it: “Israel is asleep, and the Lord is absent.” When God’s people are slow to respond to the Lord and he departs, “her lovesickness overwhelms her prudence.” She mounts a wild and unconsidered quest to satisfy the longing that he has awakened. This time the keepers of the faith—Moses and the Levites, and their prophetic heirs—“offer no comfort but only judgment.” 

The singer’s song in today’s verses tells a cautionary tale. In Israel’s history, one thinks of the Golden Calf, a wrong-headed attempt to make up for Moses’ absence during his forty days on Mt. Sinai—to which Moses responds harshly. Or Israel’s tendency to turn to Canaanite deities of fertility in the face of drought—prompting the prophets’ persistent reproofs. One may even fast forward to the Bride of Christ’s flirting with, even taking to her bed, alien lovers of secularism, nationalism, racism, materialism, spiritualism, occultism—countered by faithful preachers’ steady urging to return to “your first love” (Revelation 2:4). In such periods, the “guardians” do their guarding by rebuking. As well they should. 

Image: Nikolay Bogatov , Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

And looking for love in the right place. Oddly complementary to today’s reading in Song of Songs is the vision in Revelation 12. Here, Michael the archangel fights the dragon who has been threatening the queen of heaven and her royal son. The queen of heaven sojourns on earth where the dragon, that is “the Devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world,” has been cast down from heaven. Ousted from the heavenly court, the Dragon-Devil carries out his campaign against her down here below. With this captivating cluster of images, John symbolically portrays the church’s career: transformed from queen of heaven to Bride-in-waiting during her period of persecution on the earth. 

With the devil’s forced change of venue, worship breaks out in heaven. The devil’s being thrown down signals his end, and, simultaneously, the inauguration of the Kingdom of God: “Now have come the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God and the authority of the Messiah, for the accuser of our comrades has been thrown down….” (Revelation 12:10). 

I think that as John writes these words he expects us to recall what he had recorded Jesus saying about his upcoming death: “’Now is the judgment of this world; now the ruler of this world will be driven out. And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.’ He said this to indicate the kind of death he was to die” (John 12:31-33). The cross of Christ becomes the place where the devil is deposed, disarmed, and defeated (Colossians 2:15), and where his grip on the sinful nations is broken (John 12:32, with Revelation 20:2-3). 

Happily, the grand arc of the biblical narrative does not culminate in the nightmare of our missing out on God’s loving advances, experiencing shame and pain like the lost lover at the hands of the “guardians.” Her Groom will not leave his Bride abandoned and shamed in the dangerous nighttime streets. The crux of the Bible’s story line is a Cross where our Heavenly Lover captures our hearts for all time, where all our resistance and all our reluctance fade away, and where the voices of our accusers — whether “guardians” or enemies — get drowned out by shouts of “Now have come the salvation and the power….” 

Be blessed this day, 

Reggie Kidd+

A Rediscovered Eden And More - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Wednesday • 10/30/2024 •

Proper 25

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 119:49-72; Song of Songs 4:9–5:1; Revelation 12:1-6; Luke 11:37-52

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 last week, this week, and the next, 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 the wonder of this “Best of Songs.” Today’s portion is Song of Songs 4:9–5:1. 

Sacramental love. There is a spiritual habit of soul—a capacity for “seeing through” to “the other side”—that is difficult for secularized Westerners to comprehend, much less experience. That’s why so many modern commentators flatten the physical similes and metaphors of love in the Song of Song. Late modern people have become tone deaf to supernal overtones—what sociologist Peter Berger calls “rumors of angels.” 

You have ravished my heart, my sister, my bride…” — Song of Songs 4:9. Our male singer and lover finds in his “sister” and “bride” a rediscovered Eden. His garden imagery is not just exotic but fantastic—fruits and flowers that would grow together in no garden in this world: “…with all choicest fruits, henna and nard,… and saffron, calamus and cinnamon, with all trees of frankincense, myrrh, and aloes, with all chief spices—a garden fountain, a well of living water, and flowing streams from Lebanon.” It is Paradise that he is imagining, for streams did not flow from Lebanon to Israel. In a Palestine that is perpetually threatened with drought, he has found, in her, his own secret garden with its ever-flowing supply of water. For him, she has become the place where he returns to Eden— where everything is possible and where life is always new.

Moreover, she takes him back to Israel’s entry into the Promised Land. Communion with her is the partaking of milk and honey: “I eat my honeycomb with my honey, I drink my wine with my milk” — Song of Songs 5:1. Milk and honey, of course, were crowning symbols of the richness of the Promised Land (Exodus 3:8). Noting, by the way, the convergence of wine and milk and honey in the Song of Songs, the Apostolic Tradition, often attributed to Hippolytus (of the church of Rome, early 3rd  century AD), supplemented the Eucharistic wine with milk and honey, symbolizing thereby the notion that communion with Christ is its own way of enjoying the bounty of the Promised Land: “…and milk and honey mingled together in fulfillment of the promise which was made to the Fathers, wherein he said ‘I will give you a land flowing with milk and honey’; which Christ indeed gave, even his flesh, whereby they who believe are nourished like little children, making the bitterness of the heart sweet by the sweetness of his word.” 

What’s more, she who is herself “an orchard of pomegranates” embodies for her lover communion with God in the temple. Pomegranates adorned the High Priest’s robe (Exodus 28:31-36; 39:22-26). Solomon set two-hundred bronze pomegranates atop the two pillars of bronze in the temple (1 Kings 7:13-22). And the very smell of her (“with all trees of frankincense, myrrh…”) puts our singer in mind of the altar from which rises the fragrance of spiced incense. There is an enchanting beauty to God’s holiness (Psalm 98:6) that the sights and smells of the temple excite in him—a beauty to which the sight and smell of her sacramentally attune him. 

The biblical world is first and foremost a challenge to a redeemed imagination, and to a restored sacramental sensibility. One of the great gifts of the Song of Songs is to contribute to the reclamation of spiritual sight and taste and smell and touch. 

The same is true for today’s passage in Revelation. Here Christ’s entire earthly career is mind-blowingly summarized, as it careens from birth to ascension against the backdrop of murderous malevolent intent. But the focus is on the pregnant heavenly royal woman who, under attack by a great red dragon, gives birth to her royal son. The son is taken to heaven, while she escapes to the wilderness, “where she has a place prepared by God.” Who is the woman? Mary? a new Israel? the Church? all of the above? In the rest of Revelation, the mother who has become the woman-of-the-wilderness becomes the Bride of Christ. Meanwhile, we will discover that her eventual elevation comes at the expense of her evil counterpart, the Whore of Babylon. The biblical world invites—no, demands—a looking beyond immediate headlines and pressing duties to a larger cosmic drama. 

Luke & Jesus’s “woes” against faux faith. With so much at stake in the grand biblical drama, it is small wonder that Jesus speaks piteous woes against those who are supposed to be guardians and promoters of the faith in his day. Those who are tasked with enlarging and building up people’s faith have been diminishing it and undermining it. And so Jesus denounces: 

• their externalism (“Did not he who made the outside make the inside also?”), 

• their elevating things less important above the more important (“you tithe mint and rue and herbs…, and neglect justice and the love of God”), 

• their pride (“…you love to have the seat of honor”), 

• the very vacuousness of their being (“…you are like unmarked graves”), 

• their lying piety (“…you approve the [murderous] deeds of your ancestors and build … tombs [to those they murdered]”) 

• their hypocritical cruelty (“…you have taken away the key of knowledge; you did not enter yourselves, and you hindered those who were entering”). 

May your time in God’s Word open up to you the vast horizons of his abiding trustworthiness, the grand hope of glory that is yours, and his overwhelmingly persistent love for you. 

Be blessed this day, 

Reggie Kidd+

More Than a Human Bride and Groom - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Tuesday • 10/29/2024 •

Proper 25

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 45; Psalm 98; Song of Songs 4:1-8; Revelation 11:14-19; Luke 11:27-36

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 last week, this week, and the next, 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 the wonder of this “Best of Songs.” Today’s portion is Song of Songs 4:1–8. 

Psalm 45 and Song of Songs — Beauty’s measure. “You are the most handsome of men; grace is poured upon your lips; therefore God has blessed you forever” — Psalm 45:2. 

“How beautiful you are, my love, how very beautiful. … You are altogether beautiful, my love; there is no flaw in you” — Song of Songs 4:1,7. 

I hope you’ll take the time to read and linger over these verses in Psalm 45 and in Chapter 4 of the Song of Songs. Today’s readings bring together two elegant love poems for our consideration, not only of Christ’s love for his church, but for consideration of the exquisite character of an ideal love between a man and a woman.

Psalm 45 contains the love poem of a bride to her husband describing his physical attractiveness. She continues by describing his many admirable other qualities and exhorts him to fulfill his role as king. The psalm concludes with instruction for the bride to let go of her former life and embrace a life richer and more wonderful than the one she is leaving.

In the verses in the Song of Songs, the husband lauds the physical beauty of his wife. The features that he finds enchanting are clear enough to us: flowing tresses, perfect teeth, crimson lips, rosy cheeks, a noble neck, and enticing breasts. In a culture where images couldn’t easily be captured (say, by a painting or a photograph), descriptions had to support memory. What do I remember about the way she looks? What was her hair like? Her teeth? Her lips? Her cheeks? The husband reviews in his mind the physical attributes which make his bride desirable to him. 

Thus, the specifics of the imagery come from another world where no camera exists to capture a memory. There’s more than a hint here, of a deep, genuine devotion. This is no make-believe, no infatuation, no romance novel kind of love. The lover sees what the lover sees, and what the lover sees is its own standard of beauty: the specific features of love’s beloved. This is one of the beautiful things about language and imagination. It takes elasticity of spirit to be able to appreciate any work of art—poetry, painting, music—but especially those coming from a different time and a different place. But the effort is fundamentally humanizing and, in the end, God-honoring.

Image: Pixabay

As we think about God contemplating us, it is worth keeping in mind that the Bible’s supreme message to us is what today’s opening verse shouts: “How beautiful you are, my love, how very beautiful.” Christ has come for his Bride. And he has done so because he finds her ravishingly beautiful. 

The Groom and the Bride. The psalm makes clear the speaker of these verses is more than a human bride, and her groom much more than a perfect vision of a human husband. The groom is the eternal Messiah, the champion of truth and justice: Your throne, O God, endures forever and ever. Your royal scepter is a scepter of equity; you love righteousness and hate wickedness. That the reference is to Jesus Christ himself is made indisputably clear by its inclusion in the letter to the Hebrews (I rather like the Jerusalem Bible’s rendering): 

 But of the Son he says, “Your throne, O God, is forever and ever,
   and the righteous scepter is the scepter of your kingdom.
9 You have loved righteousness and hated wickedness;
therefore God, your God, has anointed you
    with the oil of gladness beyond your companions.”

10 And,

“In the beginning, Lord, you founded the earth,
    and the heavens are the work of your hands;
11 they will perish, but you remain;
    they will all wear out like clothing;
12 like a cloak you will roll them up,
    and like clothing they will be changed.
But you are the same,
    and your years will never end” (Hebrews 1:8-12). 

Read from this perspective, then, Psalm 45 takes on a soaring perspective. Here, a thousand years in advance, Christ’s church, “the princess decked in her chamber,” extols the virtues of the God-man who will come “from ivory palaces” to wed her to himself. 

Revelation & the coming of the wrath. The Book of Revelation brings us to the third of three woes and to the seventh of seven trumpets. This is one of several times that this amazing book takes us to the very end of time, when all accounts get settled: “The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Messiah, and he will reign forever and ever” (Revelation 11:15). The time of “judging the dead” and “for rewarding your servants” is simultaneously the time when “your wrath has come … and for destroying those who destroy the earth” (Revelation 11:18). This thought can be a troubling one, except when we realize that it is borne out of passion for the protection and the purity of the Bride whose wedding is in view throughout. Regard for her well-being, and disdain for all that defiles her and all of creation, flow from the same heart of divine love.  

Luke & the offer of wisdom & mercy. In an altogether similar vein, Jesus rebukes his fellow Galileans for failing to “see” (“Your eye is the lamp of the body”) what is really going on before their very eyes. Israel’s poignant story of love lost and then regained is being played out in their very presence. Indeed, it is standing right in front of them. In Jesus is a wisdom greater than that which the queen of the South had found in Solomon. In Jesus is a mercy greater than that which Jonah had offered the Ninevites. To paraphrase a parallel thought in John’s gospel: “The Groom is with the Bride. Don’t miss it!” (see John 3:29). 

Collect of the Day: Almighty and everlasting God, increase in us the gifts of faith, hope, and charity; and, that we may obtain what you promise, make us love what you command; 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+