Wednesday • 4/24/2024 •
Wednesday of the 4th Week of Easter
This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 119:49–72; Exodus 33:1-23; 1 Thessalonians 2:1-12; Matthew 5:17-20
This morning’s Canticles are: before the Psalm reading, Pascha Nostrum(“Christ Our Passover,” BCP, p. 83); 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)
Friendship with God. Thus the Lord used to speak to Moses face to face, as one speaks to a friend. — Exodus 33:11. Hebrew people defined friendship in terms of “speaking face to face.” It was about love. Remarkably, the Bible holds out the extraordinary prospect of the Lord of heaven and earth being “friend” to us, “speaking face to face” to us.
That said, Scripture rarely mentions friendship between God and humans. The only person in the Bible who is directly called “friend of God” is Abraham (see James 2:23). In Genesis 18, Abraham had been brazen enough to bargain with God to spare Sodom and Gomorrah for the sake of ten innocent souls. God had been willing to listen to his friend’s urgings. The Lord was even willing to find the humor in ninety-year-old Sarah’s amusement at being told she would bear a child. Similarly, Abraham listened when, in Genesis 22, his Divine Friend asked him to make an unthinkable sacrifice: his own son. Loving attentiveness is at the heart of friendship.
Other than the Lord relating to Moses “as one speaks to a friend,” the Bible reserves the thought of friendship with God for the night Jesus, the God-Man, washes his disciples’ feet and says he’s no longer going to deal with them as servants, but as “friends.” He calls them friends, he explains, “because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father” (John 15:15).
Two features of Moses’s friendship with God are worth noting.
Friendship with God means expecting him to be forbearing with us. Aspects of Moses’s conversation with the Lord aren’t exactly lucid, but the Lord seems patient with Moses. To take but one example from a tangled conversation, right after the Lord promises that his presence will accompany the Israelites on their journey, Moses responds “If your presence will not go, do not carry us up from here” (Exodus 33:17). Instead of rebuking Moses for doubting his promise, the Lord assures him he will keep his word and adds “for you have found favor in my sight, and I know you by name” (Exodus 33:17).
If you are a friend of God—and if you are in Christ, you are indeed a friend of God—you can tell him what’s on your heart. You can speak to him “face to face.” He won’t mock. He won’t ignore. However, then … you should be ready to listen.
Friendship with God means taking the time & making the space to meet with him. My thirty-something year old son tells me his schedule is so crazy that he must deliberately set up time to meet and simply “hang out” with friends. Even if it’s only for coffee or a quiet lunch, he explains, the time is necessary for nurturing and maintaining those relationships. It’s the same with us when it comes to God.
Now Moses used to take the tent and pitch it outside the camp, far off from the camp; he called it the tent of meeting. — Exodus 33:7. If you are reading this, I may very well be preaching to the choir. By praying and reading through the Daily Office, perhaps in a space you have carved out specifically for that purpose, you are doing the very thing you need to do to build your friendship with God. Nonetheless, I will go on to point out that Moses cultivated his friendship with God with intentionality. Moses had a place, and he had a time. He would take the time to go to the “tent” where he would expect to “meet” the Lord.
At midnight I will rise to give you thanks, because of your righteous judgments. — Psalm 119:62. Every Wednesday, the Daily Lectionary calls for the reading of a portion of Psalm 119, so that we get all the way through this, the longest of the psalms, over the course of the seven weeks it takes to cover the whole of the Psalter. Psalm 119 is usually thought of as a psalm in praise of God’s Word. It is—but it is also a psalm in praise of prayer. It talks about praying at all times: “at midnight” (v. 62, from today’s portion!), “early in the morning” (v. 147), “in the night watches” (v. 148), “seven times a day” (v. 167).
The “at midnight” prayer mentioned in today’s reading is especially helpful. Midnight is when you wake up thinking about everything that worries you—the child you’re concerned about, the task you don’t see how you are going to finish, even the exhaustion that tonight’s anxiety will give you tomorrow. And what is so especially helpful is that today’s verse about prayer is an exhortation to give thanks. It’s amazing what happens when you translate your anxious broodings into petitions for help. It’s even more amazing what happens inside you when you have prefaced your requests with thanks. You become attuned to the ways you have already seen the Lord work, and you become fortified with the hopeful expectation that his righteous judgments will work their way into each and every situation.
And so the apostle Paul encourages God’s friends: “Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 4:6-7).
Be blessed this day.
Reggie Kidd+