Where Restfulness Resides - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Thursday • 2/25/2021
Week of 1 Lent

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 50; Deuteronomy 9:23—10:5; Hebrews 4:1–10; John 3:16–21 

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)

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A Sabbath Rest Remains

Everybody I know is ready for some rest. Along comes Lent, with its call to take some time and assess the restlessness and weariness in our hearts. Lent bids us realize there’s a drag within ourselves that creates its own kind of readiness for respite. Lent is a season to find our life in Jesus, where restfulness resides. Lent is a season to reflect on what is true tranquility and rest for our souls.  

“So then, a sabbath rest still remains for the people of God…” — Hebrews 5:9. Only a partial rest awaited the children of Israel at the end of their forty years of wanderings and upon their entrance into the Promised Land. There was a war of conquest to be waged under Joshua. Unfortunately, it would only be partially won. Then, under the Judges, there would be centuries of vacillation between fragile peace and painful oppression by neighbors. Even when David ascends the throne of a united and prosperous kingdom, he composes (according to the writer to the Hebrews) Psalm 95, calling upon God’s people to look for another “day” in which God will provide rest for his people: “Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts” (Hebrews 4:7; Psalm 95:7). 

The fact is, as long as sin is in the picture, there is no final rest. And yet, God is actively at work in history to bring about that very rest. That’s what Israel’s sabbath-system pictured, by calling for more than a weekly sabbath. Every year, seven sabbaths after the first fruits, on the fiftieth day, when the harvest was all in, Israel celebrated the end of the year’s labors (Leviticus 23:15–21). Then, every seventh year was to be a year of sabbath rest. And after seven cycles of seven-year sabbaths, the fiftieth year was to be a year of Jubilee (Leviticus 25:1–7). All these sabbath days and sabbath years were intended to provide periods of rest for people as well as for the created order. For their failure to keep these extended and promise-bearing sabbaths, exile comes upon God’s people (see Leviticus 26:34-35; 2 Chronicles 36:21; Jeremiah 25:11-12; 29:10). 

With a note of profound hope, the book of Daniel pictures history as opening out on one final and great sabbath of rest when “one like a son of man” would assume all dominion on earth, put an end to sin, … atone for iniquity … and bring in “everlasting righteousness” (Daniel 9:20–27). Then, and only then, will begin the everlasting sabbath-rest, when sin and death are no more, and all of creation enters a new season of life under God’s direct governance. And its culmination takes place in Revelation 21–22, after seven cycles of judgments as described in the Book of Revelation.

For good reason, the writer to the Hebrews holds out the hope that “a sabbath rest remains for the people of God” (Hebrews 5:9). He urges his Jewish Christian readers, weary of their difficulties (persecution, and demands of loyalty from their countrymen), to stay strong, and not lose heart. Christ has claimed them by his blood, and he will bring them all the way into their final rest, when God “once more shakes not only the earth but heaven too” (Hebrews 12:26). And the writer to the Hebrews would urge believers of our day as well, not to let our weariness overwhelm us, but to press further into the grace and the strength of Christ. In the words of the letter itself: “hold firm the confidence and the pride that belong to hope” (Hebrews 3:6). 

The good news is that with Christ’s resurrection at Easter, the Lord Jesus stands ready to keep his promise to give rest and respite to all those who are weary and heavy laden (Matthew 11:28). The good news is that with Christ’s resurrection at Easter, not only has he been given all authority over every circumstance that would grind us down, but he has promised his presence with us as we follow him “to the end of the age” (Matthew 28:18–20). 

Be blessed this day. 

Reggie Kidd+

Image: Detail, stained glass, Cathedral Church of St. Luke, Orlando, Florida

A Greater Mediator - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Wednesday, 2/24/2021
Week of 1 Lent

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 119:49–72; Deuteronomy 9:13–21; Hebrews 3:12–19; John 2:23–3:15

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)

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It was Lent when I first started attending worship at the Cathedral a number of years ago. Lent itself was an unfamiliar practice to me. It so happened, however, that some unexpected sadness had entered my life at that time. I felt that, sort of like Jesus in the wilderness, I had been shoved into a wilderness myself. As a result, I was looking for a worship experience that had room for pain, that was more than a cool song-set, more than happy-clappies. Worship that took into account people’s wilderness wanderings. I guess I was ready for Lent’s remembrance of Jesus’s forty days in his wilderness. 

Then I lay prostrate before the Lord as before, forty days and forty nights; I neither ate bread nor drank water, because of all the sin you had committed, provoking the Lord by doing what was evil in his sight. — Deuteronomy 9:18. Twice, Moses prostrates himself before Yahweh at Mount Sinai for forty days and forty nights. During each period, he becomes the bearer of a precious gift from God to us. 

Moses as messenger. When Moses says, “Then I lay prostrate before the Lord as before, forty days and forty nights,” he is reflecting that he had just been, with Yahweh, at the summit of Mount Sinai. There he had received, from the very finger of God, the Decalogue, the Ten Commandments. In bold strokes, those “Ten Words” sketched out what human life looks like when it is in sync with God’s own life. God’s gift to the world was to be his people, shaped by these very words into a “holy nation” and “treasured possession.” Yahweh intended for them to manifest what life, lived into its fullness, looks like, a model and picture of the whole of humanity one day enjoying that life. A life, in the words of the Westminster Catechism, of “glorifying God and enjoying him forever.” Moses was to be the messenger of these words from God, and Israel was to be the messenger to the world. That’s the first gift. 

Moses as mediator. The second gift stems from the fact that the giving and accepting of the first gift isn’t so simple. There’s a sin problem that has to be overcome before God’s Word can become good news for us. Even after their dramatic rescue from Egypt, God’s people are as much under sin’s domination as the rest of the world. As a result, during the very same forty days and nights that Moses spends atop Mount Sinai receiving God’s Word (the first time), the Israelites are below fashioning for themselves an idol. 

As a result, Moses spends a second forty days and forty nights prostrate before the Lord. This time he serves as mediator of the covenant, positioning himself between God’s righteous wrath and the people who are so deserving of it. It’s important to read this encounter in the larger context of the canon of Scripture, and especially of what is arguably its capstone verse, “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life” (John 3:16—from tomorrow’s Gospel reading). In today’s reading in John, the Pharisee Nicodemus visits Jesus.  In that conversation, the Bible offers one of its many, many pictures of how the God who “so loved the world” provides a mediator to stand between us sinners and the punishment that we deserve: “And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life” (John 3:14–15, quoting Numbers). 

During his second forty days and forty nights of prostration before the Lord, Moses prefigures a greater Mediator. The writer to the Hebrews will describe in our reading later this week that Jesus’s entire life among us is a kind of Lenten journey, in preparation for his suffering a mediating death on behalf of us sinners. “In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to the one who was able to save him from death (though the last phrase is literally, and more accurately, out of death)—Hebrews 5:7). 

Lent is an extraordinary gift. It invites us to remember Jesus in his wilderness, to remember him as an even greater Messenger and Mediator than Moses. In his wilderness, Jesus listens to God’s Word. In his wilderness, Jesus begins his mission to mediate life to us, to bring us “out of error into truth, out of sin into righteousness, out of death into life” (BCP, p. 368). The writer to the Hebrews urges us to imitate Jesus rather than the Israelites in this regard, that we don’t let unbelief keep us from entering the Promised Land: “But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called “today,” so that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. For we have become partners of Christ, if only we hold our first confidence firm to the end” (Hebrews 3:13–14). Lent invites us, in the words of the great Baptist hymn: “Trust and obey, for there’s no other way, to be happy in Jesus, than to trust and obey.” 

Be blessed this day,

Reggie Kidd+

Image: Stained Glass, Cathedral Church of St. Luke, Orlando, Florida.

The Father's Mission of Rescue - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Tuesday • 2/23/2021
Week of 1 Lent

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 45; Deuteronomy 9:4–12; Hebrews 3:1–11; John 2:13–22

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)

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Looking back at Deuteronomy from the perspective of the letter to the Hebrews, it is profoundly sad to see the horrible decisions the Israelites who gathered at the foot of Mount Sinai are making. “They have been quick to turn from the way that I commanded them; they have cast an image for themselves,” Yahweh charges (Deuteronomy 9:12). Here are the people through whom God intends to bring order and grace back into a world that, at the beginning of the Bible’s story, had fallen into ruin and cruelty. Despite their own failings (see the litany in Deuteronomy 9:4–8), they have been called to be a “holy people,” a “treasured possession,” and “a consecrated people” (Deuteronomy 7:6; 26:18,19). 

But at the foot of Mount Sinai, they renounce their mission to become a home to Yahweh’s presence. They mock God’s call to establish a beachhead for the restoration of all the earth as God’s treasure, re-consecrated to his glory. 

In the words of the letter to the Hebrews, Moses had been placed among the people to help build themselves into a “house” for God (Hebrews 3:5), conforming their lives to the life of God as revealed in the Ten Words (the Ten Commandments). But with the creation of the golden calf (Deuteronomy 9), they basically said,, “Nah! We’d rather welcome some other object of worship, as long as we get to fashion it for ourselves. It may be something less, but at least it won’t be you!” They’d chosen to continue the disorder and the cruelty. They’d chosen separation not just from their destiny, but from sanity and love. They won’t “reverse the curse.”

And yet … even within the story line as it unfolds in Deuteronomy (to look ahead briefly at tomorrow’s verses from Deuteronomy), their mediator Moses will not let the people go to their own destruction. Moses cries out for mercy, and the mission moves forward. In his persistence as mediator, Moses anticipates Jesus who, as the writer to the Hebrews puts it, comes as “apostle” of the Father’s mission of rescue, as “high priest” of the Father’s love, and as “faithful son over God’s house” (Hebrews 3:1,5). 

God’s amazing grace is revealed in this: Jesus is righteous where we are unrighteous, upright where we are dishonorable, incorrupt where we are corrupt. And by his death, resurrection, and ongoing ministry at the right hand of the Father, he offers us what is his: his righteousness, his uprightness, his incorruptibility. 

The Gospel according to John records one of the most dramatic moments in all of Scripture in this second chapter. John has already described Jesus this way: “the Word became flesh and took up residence among us” (John 1:14 NET—the Greek is literally, if colloquially, “pitched his tent among us”). Jesus, God-residing-among-us, comes to the temple in Jerusalem, the place designed to be his own house. He comes to see if he is welcome there. 

Instead of a house of prayers for bringing God’s life and people’s lives together, Jesus finds an emporium for merchants (John 2:16; Luke 19:46). Instead of a sanctuary for those who would humble themselves in the presence of the glory of God, he finds a monument that’s been forty-six years in the making to the ego of Herod (John 2:20). Instead of a venue for life-giving sacrifice, he finds an entrenched Sadducean, resurrection-denying aristocracy. 

“Destroy this building,” Jesus declares, “and in three days I will raise it up” (John 2:19). When he offers his body as God’s new temple, he becomes in himself the place where God’s life and people’s lives come together, he becomes sanctuary to the humble, and he becomes the sacrifice that offers unending life. When he offers his body, he begins the construction project of God’s new and final temple. It’s a building that rises “living stone” by “living stone” (1 Peter 2:4–5). It’s a building made up of us: “Christ…was faithful over God’s house as a son, and we are his house if we hold firm the confidence and the pride that belong to hope” (Hebrews 3:6). 

It is an unspeakably high honor to be that house. The challenge that comes to us from Deuteronomy, Hebrews, and John, in concert, is to hold to that honor with confidence and hope…for the sake of the world that God loves and that he will see re-consecrated to his glory. 

Be blessed this day, 

Reggie Kidd+

Image: Carl Bloch, (1834–1890). Jesus Casting Out the Money Changers at the Temple. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

We Can Count on God's Son, Our Brother - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Monday • 2/22/2021
Week of 1 Lent

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 41; Psalm 52; Deuteronomy 8:11–20; Hebrews 2:11–18; John 2:1–12

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)

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For the one who sanctifies and those who are sanctified are all from one…. That is a literal rendering of the first phrase in Hebrews 2:11. Translators find a number of ways to bring out what the expression “from one” means: “of one Father,” “of one family,” “of one stock.” The point the writer to the Hebrews is making is that Jesus is our brother, and we have a shared life with him.

The benefits and the significance of the life that Jesus shares with us are inestimable. But that does not keep our eloquent writer from pursuing the idea. In his exploration of the topic, he leads with a wonderful litotes (understatement, by expressing a negative): “Jesus is not ashamed to call them (us!) brothers and sisters” (Hebrews 2:11). The affirmation that lies beneath this understatement is that Jesus delights in the fact that he is “bring[ing] many children to glory” (Hebrews 2:10). He has become what we are, to cite once again the ancient theologians, that we might become what he is. And as the writer to the Hebrews notes in chapter twelve, his work on our behalf has brought him joy. He disregarded the shame of the cross “for the sake of the joy set before him”—that joy being us! (Hebrews 12:2).  

There follow three lovely quotes from the Old Testament, all of which the writer to the Hebrews puts in the mouth of Jesus himself. It’s an extraordinary combination of truths:  

“I will proclaim your name to my brothers and sisters, in the midst of the congregation I will praise you.” — Hebrews 2:12 (from Psalm 22:22). When we gather, the ascended Jesus is somehow present to us and alongside us as a fellow worshiper. He leads us in worship by making God’s Word come alive in our hearts and by being the chief voice in our singing of the Father’s praise. For good reason, an ancient way of singing the Doxology was this: “Glory to the Father, through the Son, by the Holy Spirit.” 

“I will put my trust in him.” — Hebrews 8:13a (from Isaiah 8:17; 12:2). Over and over again in the Old Testament, God’s message to his people was: Trust me! Listen to me! Don’t forget me! Remember me! 

In fact, within the ten verses of today’s passage in Deuteronomy, Moses warns God’s people not to forget Yahweh three times, and he tells them to remember him once—Deuteronomy 8:11,13,18,19. The NRSV translates the last verse of today’s passage from Deuteronomy as a warning that the people would perish if they would “not obey” Yahweh’s voice. That passage in the original Hebrew language states it is because they would “not listen to” Yahweh’s voice. Israel’s hardness of heart was really hardness of hearing. Because they didn’t listen, they couldn’t trust. 

At long last (“in these last days”), in Jesus, maintains the writer to the Hebrews, there is one true Israelite who trusts the Father. Finally, in Jesus, there is one Child who obeys. Finally, in Jesus, there is one Son who listens. Finally, in Jesus, One of us doesn’t forget. The wonder of it is that God’s Son does all this trusting and obeying and listening on our behalf. Some theologians refer to Jesus as exercising “vicarious faith.” Later, the writer to the Hebrews says, “he ever lives to intercede” for us (Hebrews 7:25). Jesus prays that his faith becomes our faith, his obedience ours, his patience ours, his endurance ours … his trust ours. 

Even when—maybe especially when—we feel we can’t trust God, we can trust Jesus’s trust for us. When our prayers feel feeble and ineffectual, as though they were simply bouncing off a concrete ceiling, we can count on Jesus’s prayers for us at the Father’s right hand. When we doubt our worthiness as sons and daughters, we can count on God’s Son, our Brother, continuing to call us what we are: “My brother! My sister!” When our grip on God loosens, we can count on Jesus’s grip on us not loosening, long enough for us to regain our grip. 

“Here am I and the children whom God has given me.” — Hebrews 2:13b (from Isaiah 8:18). Jesus takes our humanity to himself so that by dying as one of us he can cover our sin and release us from the finality of death (Hebrews 2:14–15). Our merciful and faithful High Priest experiences and resists temptations for us and dies for us. And because death cannot hold him, and because we live in him, death no longer brings the end for us; it merely marks a change. As the Eucharistic prayer in Commemoration for the Dead puts it: “For to your faithful people, O Lord, life is changed, not ended; and when our mortal body lies in death, there is prepared for us a dwelling place eternal in the heavens” (BCP, p. 382). 

When the medieval Italian painter Giotto renders the scene of the Marriage at Cana (from today’s reading in John 2), he places the Eucharistic elements on the table. That simple table in Galilee becomes, for the redeemed Christian imagination, a symbol of the future Wedding Feast of the Lamb. Jesus turns vessels of water-purification into vessels for wine. In doing so, he celebrates not just the wedding of that day, but a greater wedding waiting at the end of time. 

Be blessed this day, 

Reggie Kidd+

Image: Giotto di Bondone (1267-1337), Cappella Scrovegni a Padova, Life of Christ, Marriage at Cana. Wikimedia Commons/Public Domain

Equipping Us for Life - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Friday • 2/19/2021
Week of Last Epiphany

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 31; Deuteronomy 7:12–16; Titus 2:1–15 (and Saturday’s Titus 3:1–15); John 1:43–51

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)

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Paul’s letter to Titus is a powerfully good read for the days right after Ash Wednesday. We wear Ash Wednesday’s ashes to confess, along with the people to whom Titus ministers, that we are confused about who God truly is, that we hurt one another, and that we are victims of our wrong desires. We, like them, apart from God’s own intervention, are “always liars, vicious brutes, lazy gluttons” (Titus 1:12). We bear Ash Wednesday’s ashes because we want to put to death a life of dissolution, destructiveness, and despair. We want to die to all that (ultimately losing) way of living.  

Towards the end of the second chapter of Titus, Paul shares the good news of how “the grace of God” (i.e., Jesus) appeared in order to teach us how to deny all those things, and how to live lives that are “self-controlled” (that is, not as lazy gluttons), “upright” (that is, not as vicious brutes), and “godly” (that is, not as liars [about God]—Titus 2:11–12). All this, because Jesus “gave himself for us that he might redeem us from all iniquity and purify for himself a people of his own who are zealous for good works” (Titus 2:14). His working in us transforms us from where the destructive life begins: from  the inside.

At the beginning of the second chapter of Titus, Paul describes something of what this looks like on the home front. When we treat the ones with whom we live with love and deference, with respect and even reverence, we “adorn” (Paul uses the Greek word from which we get “cosmetics”—Titus 2:10) the gospel. We make it more attractive, more accessible, more plausible. It’s of a piece with what Paul says in 1 Timothy (a letter he writes at about the same time) when he describes the church as the pillar and foundation of the truth (1 Timothy 3:14). With Jesus, when we die to ourselves and our selfish agendas,  and live for others in him, we become the best argument for the truth of the faith. 

A few verses into the third chapter of Titus, Paul further describes Jesus not merely as the appearance of God’s “grace,” but also as a manifestation of God’s “goodness” and his “loving kindness” (the Greek for “loving kindness” is philanthropia, literally “man lovingness”—Titus 3:). Christ’s coming shows God’s fundamentally loving disposition towards people. Remarkable! 

We don’t have to find or manufacture a stairway to heaven, which is what the people of Crete were trying to do. God came, in person, down to us. We don’t have to climb up to him. God loves us not “because of any works of righteousness that we had done, but according to his own mercy” (Titus 3:4). In Christ, God washes away the defilement and deadness of our being with the life-giving waters of baptism and graces us with the renewing energy of the Holy Spirit (Titus 3:5–6). 

We saw how, in the second chapter of Titus, Jesus’s power as the “grace” of God shapes our home lives. Here in the third chapter, it is by equipping us for life in the public square that Jesus displays God’s “goodness” and “loving kindness” (or, to put it another way, God’s “affection for humanity”—Titus 3:4). “Remind them to be subject to rulers and authorities, to be obedient, to be ready for every good work, to speak evil of no one, to avoid quarreling, to be gentle, and to show every courtesy to everyone” (Titus 3:1–2). We say a lot about who God is when we show respect to rulers and authorities, when we demonstrate a readiness to do our part for the common good, and when we engage in public discourse with courtesy and with agreeability (the Greek word that the NRSV translates as “be obedient” is peitharchein, which means “be persuadable”). Dear God, what pertinent words for our day!

Be blessed this day, 

Reggie Kidd+

Image: “Behold, I Make All Things New” by Lawrence OP is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Here, In Jesus, Is What It Is to Live - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Thursday • 2/18/2021
Week of Last Epiphany

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 37:1–18; Deuteronomy 7:6–11; Titus 1:1–16; John 1:29–34

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)

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“What do I have to do to get her to love me?” That was the soundtrack of my early- and mid-teen years. I never seemed to be good looking enough, cool enough, or … I don’t know … whatever. 

Finally, a minister friend wondered aloud if perhaps I had made a god (maybe a goddess?) out of finding someone to love me. He prompted me to consider that maybe, just maybe, I had been looking for perfect love where it couldn’t be found. And in the meantime, maybe, just maybe, I had been trying to manufacture from within myself worthiness of love, but was coming up with something that was just the opposite. Maybe, just maybe, I was becoming a taker rather than a giver. 

That conversation was a fork in the road that led me soon thereafter to finding the love of God in Jesus Christ. Here was a love that came as pure gift, unearned, unmerited. A love I didn’t have to charm my way into, be cool enough to attract, or good enough to merit. It was so freeing, and still is.  

Deuteronomy. Yahweh expresses his desire that his people understand he has this kind of freely given, unearned, unmerited love for them. He loves them not because they are so numerous (and, of course, he could have listed any number of possible attributes—Deuteronomy 7:7). Rather, he loves them because, well, because he loves them. There’s no deeper reason. There’s no hidden agenda. There’s simply his love. He responded to their cries in slavery because he loves them. He leads them because he loves them. He will give them an inheritance because he loves them. He commands them because he loves them, and because his commands bring their character in sync with his and make possible a reciprocal, intimate relationship…of love. 

Titus. People on the island of Crete, where Paul has sent Titus, were as confused about love as I was in my teens. They looked for love in a god who was a projection of themselves. When Paul quotes the Cretan prophet, “Cretans are always liars” (Titus 1:12), he has one particular lie in mind. Around the Mediterranean basin, Cretans were famous for claiming that the Greek god Zeus had originally been a man whose birthplace and tomb were on Crete. A famous (non-Cretan) prayer to Zeus says, “Cretans are always liars. For a tomb, O Lord, Cretans build for you; but you did not die, for you are forever” (Hymn to Zeus 8–9). 

This Cretan prophet admits that the Cretans have refashioned God in their own image, and in loving him are loving an image of themselves. The result is not just confusion about the true nature of God, but loveless cruelty among themselves (“vicious brutes”) and appetites that are out of control (“lazy gluttons”—Titus 1:12). They claim to know God, Paul says, but by their actions they deny him (Titus 1:16). 

In this first chapter, Paul begins his letter to help Titus communicate to the Cretans that religion based on a lie will not help them. They need leaders who can teach and model the truth (Titus 1:5–10). They need to stop listening to false teachers who are using even the stories of the Hebrew Scriptures to fabricate myths about great heroes (“Jewish myths”). Instead, as Paul will show in chapters 2 and 3, they need to hear about the promises God had made through Israel for a redeemer who would show God’s “grace,” and his “goodness and loving kindness” (Titus 2:11–14; 3:4–8). By knowing Christ, they will know “the hope of eternal life that God, who never lies, [had] promised before the ages began” (Titus 1:2). 

There is one very important practical takeaway from reading this first chapter of Titus during Lent. This chapter invites us all to reflect on whether we love the God who truly is, or a god of our own fashioning. This chapter is a call to reflect on and repent of an approach to God that smacks of self-adoration, of wish-fulfillment, of self-help, or of loving ourselves in an image of our own fantasy. 

John. Jesus is the perfect antidote for our attempts to make ourselves worthy of love or to pretend that God is merely us, only imagined as bigger.. He is that antidote because he is “the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world” (John 1:29). And because it is upon him that the Spirit of God descends and remains (John 1:32); for he then bestows that same gift—the living presence of the Living God—upon those who love and follow him (John 1:33). Here, in Jesus, is what it is to be loved and to love. Here, in Jesus, is what it is to live. 

Be blessed this day, 

Reggie Kidd+ 

Image: “Church of Saint Titus, Pl. Agiou Titou, Heraklion, Crete” by Mølterland is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Lent is a Time to Take Stock - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Wednesday, 2/17/2021
Ash Wednesday

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 32; Jonah 3:1–4:11; Hebrews 12:1–14; Luke 18:9–14

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)

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The juxtaposition could not be more exquisite. At the beginning of the epistle to the Hebrews, Jesus is the “Son” who is the radiance and representation of God’s very being (Hebrews 1:1,3). Here, towards the end of the epistle, Jesus is the exemplar of a kind of faith that will despise the shame of the cross, and yet endure it for joy on the far side. As though he were a disobedient son (which he is not), Jesus undergoes a death that at one and the same time purifies others’ sin, and models for them how to endure a training in obedience that comes only through suffering. The writer to the Hebrews presents us with a staggering complex of truth. His Jesus is truly God and truly man, the only One who can meet us right where we are and take us where we need to go. 

During Lent, we focus on the way that, in his sufferings, Jesus meets us where we are. 

Throughout this epistle, the writer to the Hebrews treats Jesus’s suffering as necessary to the cleansing of the conscience of guilty sinners (Hebrews 10:22). He became like us in all respects, except sin (Hebrews 2:11,14,17; 4:15), for one overriding purpose. He did so in order that his sacrificial death could be a once, and for all, perfect covering of the transgressions of people who know they are otherwise worthy of eternal separation from God. “But when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, ‘he sat down at the right hand of God,’ … For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are sanctified. … he also adds, ‘I will remember their sins and their lawless deeds no more.’ Where there is forgiveness of these, there is no longer any offering for sin” (Hebrews 10:12,14,17,18). 

Like him, we learn the obedience of “sons” (for whether we are male or female, we are all adopted as favored “sons”). Unlike us, however, his learning of obedience was from one level of obedience to another: “Although he was a Son, he learned obedience through what he suffered; and having been made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him…” (Hebrews 5:8–9). Unlike him, we have to learn (sometimes through hard discipline) obedience on the far side of disobedience. 

Lent is a time to take stock. Thus, Psalm 32’s “Blessed are they whose transgressions are forgiven, and whose sin is put away! … Then I acknowledged my sin to you, and did not conceal my guilt” (Psalm 32:1,5). And also, the eloquent and powerful “Litany of Penitence” in the Ash Wednesday service: “We confess to you, Lord, all our past unfaithfulness: the pride, hypocrisy, and impatience of our lives, We confess to you, Lord….” In its totality, Ash Wednesday’s “Litany of Penitence” gives us specific words to name our pride, our self-indulgence, our anger, our envy, our intemperance, our dishonesty, our sloth, our indifference, our lovelessness, and our wastefulness (BCP, pp. 267–269). 

Prayer along these lines is perfect for those of us who recognize ourselves to be in need of the disciplining work of “the Father of spirits.”  It is perfect for those of us who long for the life that he is more than willing to give (Hebrews 12:9). Praying this way is to adopt that posture which befits those who are looking for help to “lift … drooping hands and strengthen … weak knees,” so that we run the race towards that “holiness without which no one will see the Lord” (Hebrews 12:14). When we pray this way, we find Jesus right alongside us, holding us, strengthening us, and pointing us to the same joy he has come to know on the far side of his own sufferings. 

Be blessed this Ash Wednesday,

Reggie Kidd+ 

Image: Greg Davis. Orlando Rescue Mission. Gift.

A Greater Salvation - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Tuesday • 2/16/2021
Week of Last Epiphany

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 26; Psalm 28; Deuteronomy 6:16–25; Hebrews 2:1–10; John 1:19–28

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)

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Deuteronomy: a great salvation. How appropriate, during this last week after Epiphany, to be reminded of that great epiphany of God that took place at the exodus. Moses reminds the children of Israel of the “great and awesome signs and wonders” by which Yahweh had delivered them: the plagues, the parting of the waters, his protection of them, and his provision for them during the wilderness journey. Moses, accordingly, urges obedience to the “commandments of the Lord your God, and his decrees, and his statutes that he has commanded” (Deuteronomy 6:17). In the land promised to their forebears, the well-being of Yahweh’s people depends on their faithfulness to his covenant with them. “If we diligently observe this entire commandment before the Lord our God, as he has commanded us, we will be in the right” (Deuteronomy 6:25). 

John: but that salvation was doomed to failure. The people, as we know, did not “observe this entire commandment,” and did not show themselves to be “in the right.” Israel’s life fell into an extended dysfunctional pattern of rebellion, punishment, repentance, rescue, restoration. Throughout the period of the judges, the period of the united monarchy, the period of the divided monarchy, the period of the Assyrian exile, the period of the Babylonian captivity, the period of the Second Temple, it was “Wash, rinse, repeat.”  The pattern extended the way to the time of John the Baptist. Here was a new voice in the wilderness, calling yet again for an exodus: “I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way of the Lord’” (John 1:23). 

John the Baptist’s mission was to point to a greater Epiphany with a greater salvation, a better exodus: “I baptize with water. Among you stands one whom you do not know, the one who is coming after me; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandal” (John 1:26–27). 

Hebrews: a greater salvation. As great as was the mediation through angels under Moses, the mediation of the Son is greater. As great as was the parting of the waters in the exodus, greater is Christ’s tasting death for everyone at Calvary on Good Friday. As great as was the power demonstrated over Egyptian false gods in the plagues, so much greater is Jesus’s resurrection at Easter. Breaking the bonds of death, Jesus has destroyed the power of the one who, since the Garden, has robbed us of the proper  dominion over “all things” for which we were created (Hebrews 2:14–15). As Twila Paris used to sing, “All that has been taken, it shall be restored. This eternal anthem, for the glory of the Lord.” The beautiful thing is that the glory of the Lord is manifest in the “bringing [of] many children to glory” by the making of “the pioneer of their salvation perfect through sufferings” (Hebrews 2:10). 

It follows, then, that as weighty as was the obligation under the covenant of Moses to “trust and obey” (to use the language of an old hymn), so much weightier is the responsibility, says the writer to the Hebrews, to “pay greater attention to what we have heard, so that we do not drift away” from “so great a salvation” (Hebrews 2:1,3). 

I pray that during this upcoming season of Lent, we step more deeply into what Paul calls “the fellowship of [Christ’s] sufferings” so that we may taste more wonderfully “the power of his resurrection” (Philippians 3:10). 

Be blessed this day, 

Reggie Kidd+

Image: "Luther rose" by Nick in exsilio is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

An Extraordinary Docent for Lent - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Monday • 2/15/2021
Week of Last Epiphany

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 25; Deuteronomy 6:10–15; Hebrews 1:1–14; John:1–18

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)

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I don’t know anybody who has not experienced the past year as tumultuous and challenging. Some of us have buried loved ones. Some of us have lost friends over politics. Some of us have lost jobs or fortunes. All of us have had the opportunity to find new depths in today’s psalm:

To you, O Lord, I lift up my soul;
my God, I put my trust in you; *
let me not be humiliated,
nor let my enemies triumph over me (Psalm 25:1). 

In two days, we come to Ash Wednesday and the beginning of Lent, forty days of preparation for the Passion’s solemnity and Easter’s joy. Lent prepares us to experience anew Christ’s humiliation on our behalf and his triumph over our enemies of sin and death. Lent invites us to “self-examination and repentance; … prayer, fasting, and self-denial; and … reading and meditating of God’s Word” (BCP, p. 265). 

This year’s readings in the Daily Office provide some of the richest material in all of Scripture for the Lenten journey. 

Deuteronomy. This week and next week, the early chapters of Deuteronomy take us back to Moses’s final instructions to Israel as they prepare to enter the Promised Land. God’s servant reminds the children of Israel just how much Yahweh’s love has been on display for them in his powerful deliverance of them from slavery and in his provision for them in their wilderness wanderings. Moses reminds them of their covenantal obligation to love Yahweh in return, to heed his instructions, and to form their lives to mirror his holiness and justice. 

In today’s passage, in particular, Moses warns against forgetfulness and presumption. When they enter the Promised Land, they will find themselves in possession of cities they had not built, houses they had not filled, cisterns they had not dug, and vineyards and olive trees they had not planted (Deuteronomy 6:10–12). It’s possible—in fact, it’s likely—that they will wrongly credit themselves or alien gods for their good fortune (Deuteronomy 6:13–14). Moses says, in effect, “Don’t do that! Don’t forget that it’s all Yahweh’s gift. Don’t presume to take credit for yourselves, or to attribute it to gods that are no gods!” 

Hebrews. Moses’s reminder was one of the “many and various ways” that, according to the writer to the Hebrews, God had spoken to his people in times past (Hebrews 1:1). The epistle to the Hebrews is an extraordinary docent for our Lenten journey because it reminds us that “in these last days [God] has spoken to us” even more directly. He has spoken to us by his Son, “the reflection of God’s glory and the exact imprint of God’s very being”—that is to say, by one who both partakes of God’s own being, and also represents him perfectly (Hebrews 1:2–3). 

Looking ahead in this extraordinary epistle, we will be reminded that because he came in our very likeness, Jesus is able to shoulder our infirmities and bear our weaknesses (Hebrews 2:17). But in this first chapter of Hebrews, the writer reminds us that Jesus is truly God, and therefore worthy of our worship. If angels must worship him (Hebrews 1:6), how much more must we! If he founded the earth and sustains its existence, and if he will outlast its present form (Hebrews 1:3,10–11), how much more is it incumbent upon us to render him the full service of our lives and care for his creation?

John has his own way of making the same point that Hebrews makes: as God’s living Word, Jesus is both very God and in relationship to God: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God” (John 1:1). Same as God, and in communion with God. A holy mystery, resolved in the love that is shared between the persons of the Father and of the Son, as they are bound together by the person of the Spirit who is love. 

I pray that during this Lent, we receive the grace to bring the tumult and the challenges of our lives to Jesus Christ. He entered into the valley of the shadow of death for us. He did so back then, and he continues to do so even now. Together, Hebrews and John will show that Jesus is completely one with us in his humanity—and he is completely here for us in the power of his divinity. 

Be blessed this day,

Reggie Kidd+

Image: "Fire flower" by @Doug88888 is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 

The Very Breath of God - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Friday • 2/12/2021
Week of 5 Epiphany

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 88; Isaiah 61:1–9; 2 Timothy 3:1–17; Mark 10:32–45

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)

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“You must understand this, that in the last days distressing times will come” (2 Timothy 3:1). Maybe it’s a bit counter-intuitive, but one of the things that can give Timothy courage to stand up against foolishness in the church is the realization that the persistence of evil is to be expected, even in his age. And it’s clear that for Paul, those days are upon us. They are an odd accompaniment of the victorious work of Christ. 

Isaiah had predicted “the year of the Lord’s favor” (Isaiah 61:2), and Jesus had declared he was inaugurating that new age (Luke 4:19,21). You’d think Jesus’s faithful followers would know nothing but good times. Life would be all “oil of gladness” and “mantle of praise,” all “enjoying the wealth of the nations” and “everlasting joy” (Isaiah 61:3,6,7). Paul himself says earlier in this letter that Christ has “abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel” (2 Timothy 1:10). 

And yet, Jesus warned his followers they would carry their own crosses, even in the wake of his victory. Throughout Paul’s campaign of proclaiming the good news of Christ’s saving work, he endured sufferings. When Timothy first became acquainted with Paul, Timothy saw some of those sufferings in his own hometown of Lystra (2 Timothy 3:11). And now, as he writes this letter, Paul sits in a Roman prison awaiting his probable martyrdom at the hands of Nero. 

Part of the sufferings that “the last days” would bring upon Christ’s church, Paul says, will be the assault of foolishness from within the church itself. God is surprised by none of this, by the way. And we shouldn’t be, either. 

Thus, the need for faithful—and courageous—teachers and shepherds. 

Here’s the situation Paul is addressing, and why it’s important for us. False teachers in Ephesus (Paul calls them goētes, “magicians,” by which he means charlatans or imposters—2 Timothy 3:13) have woven a spell of an “over-realized eschatology” (the mistaken notion that the resurrection is “already,” and there is no “not yet”). They agree that the new life is our born-again life. But they depart into a non-Christian direction by teaching that “now” is all there is. In other words, it’s in this life that you need to maximize your possibilities, your potential, your prestige, and your pleasure. What it led to in Timothy’s church is what it has led to throughout the history of the church: rank narcissism. To deny the need for resurrection is to deny that sin still besets us and that it must die one last death at Jesus’ return. Ironically, this false teaching opens the floodgates to an unbridled religion of self. 

It is not accidental that Paul’s list of vices opens with lovers of themselves and closes with lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God. Everything in between is about building up oneself and destroying others. Religion stressing only the “already” with no room for the “not yet” cannot help but produce a self-serving and abusive lifestyle. Whatever appearance of godliness such teaching maintains, it has nothing of the Spirit of God about it. The only power it knows is Satan’s, not God’s. 

Chief among Paul’s antidotes for Timothy (and for us) is the Scriptures (by which Paul means our Old Testament, but for us includes the New Testament). The Scriptures are entirely trustworthy. They are the very breath of God, and they find their coherence (make you wise for salvation through faith) in Christ Jesus (2 Timothy 3:15,16). 

When he writes, “All Scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, so that everyone who belongs to God may be proficient, equipped for every good work,” Paul characterizes the Old Testament’s benefit using four terms that have been much discussed. It is probably best to understand them as a Jewish Christian’s use of the traditional categories of Scripture. 

First, teaching: the Law told the story of God’s redemption of his people and spelled out implications for life in covenant with him. 

Second, reproof: the Prophets had brought God’s covenantal lawsuit against his rebellious people; the Prophets wrote in such a way as to convict an erring people of their waywardness, pointing them to One in whose sufferings and glory their hope lay. 

Third, correction: in the so-called Writings (the Psalms and the wisdom literature), God had provided songs and sayings designed to realign his people’s hearts with his own heart, teaching them to lament and rejoice and live in accordance with his wisdom. 

Finally, there is training in righteousness: an all-encompassing term for education and spiritual formation in Paul’s world. With this last phrase, Paul indicates that the world’s highest aspirations for wisdom are more than met in the account of redemption in Christ, long anticipated and embedded in Israel’s Scriptures. 

Collect for Proper 28. Blessed Lord, who caused all holy Scriptures to be written for our learning: Grant us so to hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them, that we may embrace and ever hold fast the blessed hope of everlasting life, which you have given us in our Savior Jesus Christ; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Be blessed this day, 

Reggie Kidd+

Image: Eagle Lectern, Cathedral Church of St. Luke, Orlando, FL

The Gracious Giver of All Good Gifts - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Thursday • 2/11/2021
Week of 5 Epiphany

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 83; Psalm 146; Psalm 147; Isaiah 60:1–17; 2 Timothy 2:14–26; Mark 10:17–31

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)

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One of the most important lessons a course in Driver’s Education teaches is not to over-compensate if the car starts to swerve out of control. Over-compensating is the fastest way to spin completely out of control. 

A master-teacher of pastoral theology, Paul teaches Timothy a similar lesson. Paul has told his young protégé that he needs to see himself as a soldier in Christ’s army (2 Timothy 2:2–3). But when his authority is challenged and he needs to “fight,” Timothy needs to do so without falling into the youthful trap of overcompensating and becoming quarrelsome and pugnacious. “Shun youthful passions and pursue righteousness, faith, love, and peace, along with those who call on the Lord from a pure heart. Have nothing to do with stupid and senseless controversies; you know that they breed quarrels. And the Lord’s servant must not be quarrelsome but kindly to everyone, an apt teacher, patient, correcting opponents with gentleness” (2 Timothy 2:22–25). 

The situation is this: Timothy’s opponents have wrongly concluded that Christ’s resurrection in the past is the only resurrection that’s going to happen. False teachers, Paul says, “have swerved from the truth by claiming that the resurrection has already taken place. They are upsetting the faith of some” (2 Timothy 2:18). They have probably inferred that our new birth or regeneration in this life (see John 5:24; Ephesians 2:4–7) is all the resurrection we are going to receive. The consequence is a theology that says: “This life is all you have, so go for the gold now. Demand your best life right now!” That approach had had devastating consequences in Corinth, where believers were suing each other and allowing the Lord’s Supper to become a showcase for the display between the “haves” (God’s “somebodies”) and the “have nots” (God’s “nobodies”—1 Corinthians 1:26–29; 6:1–8; 11:27–34). 

To mount a measured resistance against foolish teaching like this, Paul reminds Timothy of several things.

First, it’s important not to get mired down in trivial arguments about meaningless words. Paul wants Timothy (and us too!) to prioritize, and to pick his battles. Not everything is worth fighting over. The resurrection is, but many other things are not. 

Second, all ideas that seem to be progressive aren’t necessarily so. The opponents are claiming a kind of advancement over a seemingly boring and staid orthodoxy that calls for waiting for a future resurrection. Their heresy will cause something to grow, and it will be an advancement of something; but it is the growth of disease, not health, the advancement of decay, not well-being. Paul likens the effect of their teaching to gangrene, which is the progressive dying of body tissue due to lack of blood. The false teachers’ your-best-life-now mindset will promote greed, not generosity; selfishness, not servanthood; viciousness, not love. And so, Timothy must stay at his post, and be “an apt teacher, patient, correcting opponents with gentleness” (2 Timothy 2:24–25).  

Third, the reason that Timothy can be both resolute and gentle is that he can rest in the confidence that the Lord is sovereign and in control. “But God’s firm foundation stands, bearing this inscription: ‘The Lord knows those who are his’” (2 Timothy 2:19). Timothy stands in the line of Isaiah who had cried out to a people suffering in exile: “Arise, shine; for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you” (Isaiah 60:1). In that day, God was going to bring about a new exodus, a return from exile, that his people could never have engineered for themselves. Timothy’s God is that very same God, the One who builds “the City of the Lord, the Zion of the Holy One of Israel” (Isaiah 60:14). 

Timothy’s God is also the God in whom Jesus had invited the rich man in Mark to trust, the God of generous provision. Jesus invites the man to step into a whole new level of trust in God: “Jesus, looking at him, loved him and said, “You lack one thing; go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.” Jesus’s loving desire was that the man realize the blessings in his life did not come from his riches, but from the gracious giver of all good gifts. In addition to his love for the man, Jesus has confidence in the sovereign goodness of his God and Father. Even though he does so sadly, Jesus can step back and  allow the man to walk away, because (I think) he knows the man’s story is not over, and is in the best hands it could possibly be in. 

Finally, the reason that Timothy can be straightforward in defending the truth but not be defensive in doing so, is that he will be giving God room to grant repentance. Here, I think, is the sense of the last portion of today’s epistle: “Correct opponents with gentleness. God may perhaps grant that they will repent and come to know the truth, and that they may escape from the snare of the devil, having been held captive by him [the devil] to do His [i.e., ironically, God himself] will” (2 Timothy 2:25b–26). Timothy can lead with what Paul calls elsewhere “the meekness and gentleness of Christ” (2 Cor 10:1), and leave the convicting to God himself. 

A good lesson in “speaking the truth in love” (Ephesians 4:15) for all of us!

Be blessed this day, 

Reggie Kidd+

Image: The Rich Young Ruler, stained glass, Cathedral Church of St. Luke, Orlando, FL