Thursday • 8/5/2021
Thursday of the Tenth Week After Pentecost (Proper 13)

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 83; Psalm 145; 2 Samuel 11:1–27; Acts 19:11–20; Mark 9:2–13

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)

2 Samuel: David becomes a monster. The David of today’s account is hardly a “man after the Lord’s own heart” (see 1 Samuel 13:14; Acts 13:22). He’s at the height of his power. The prophet Nathan has revealed God’s promise of an everlasting dynasty. Yet he stumbles. Horribly. It is as though David intends to prove ahead of time the truth of British Lord Acton’s 1887 dictum: “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men.” David becomes a monster, and we cringe as we observe.

God has graciously given him power to shepherd His flock and to administer justice on behalf of His people. Instead, David abuses his power. He fleeces the flock by taking Bathsheba from Uriah, and he breaks Commandments Five through Ten in the process.

If you like, you can view my homily on this passage at the Cathedral Church of St Luke (Orlando) from 7/25/2021 on YouTube, “David Becomes a Monster.”

Mark: Jesus’s transfiguration and its promise. The transfiguration of Jesus promises us that all that is monstrous within us will one day be vanquished. Jesus appears garbed in the glorified humanity that will be his upon his resurrection. His will be a glorified humanity which we will share as well. It was difficult for Peter to understand what was going on that day: “He did not know what to say…” (Mark 9:6).

Later, with this very moment in mind (“we had been eyewitnesses of his majesty”—2 Peter 1:16), Peter describes the significance of his glimpse of God’s revivification of our fallen human nature. Jesus’s transfiguration had been a preview of our becoming “participants of the divine nature. For this very reason, you must make every effort to support your faith with goodness, and goodness with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with endurance, and endurance with godliness, and godliness with mutual affection, and mutual affection with love” (2 Peter 1:3–7).

The wonder is, the life of the future has taken hold of our lives right now. We will one day be entirely filled with goodness and faith and knowledge and self-control and godliness and mutual affection and love. Yet even now, from Peter’s perspective, that life has the power to work its way into the very fiber of our being. Praise be! We don’t have to surrender to being monsters.

Acts: Paul’s battle against evil. Paul’s ministry is to declare the good news of God’s rescuing us from sin and evil and death through Christ Jesus. God attests to the truthfulness of Paul’s message by granting miraculous healings and deliverances, even by means of articles of clothing that had touched his skin (Acts 19:11–12).

Inevitably, Paul meets resistance from “the other side.” A subtle form of resistance comes in the form of imitation—imitation by those who know to invoke the name of Jesus, but without knowing Jesus (Acts 19:13–15). Their beating at the hands of a demon-possessed man sends the imitators scurrying (Acts 19:16). It so happens that archaeological evidence shows the people of Ephesus and its environs to be unusually attracted to phenomena that we would think of as magical and esoteric. So, when word gets out that the Jesus whom Paul preaches is not to be trifled with, there is a strong response. Many practitioners of magical arts become believers in Christ, and jettison the artifacts of their former way of life (Acts 19:17–19).

Again and again, the Bible presses upon us God’s relentless pursuit of the human race. He will not surrender us to our worst instincts. He has come to us in his Son, with the promise to eliminate the evil in us and to transfigure us no less than he transfigured his Son, and to call us no less beloved than the Beloved himself.

Be blessed this day,

Reggie Kidd+

Image: Adapted from "Paul and Thecla fresco" by David J. Lull is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0