Bigger Voices - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Tuesday • 6/29/2021

We’re taking a detour from the Daily Office readings for a few days. Instead, we’re thinking through various facets of worship and how our Lord provides meaningful communion with him through our formal corporate worship as well as in individual worship in our daily devotions. The thoughts offered here are excerpts from articles I wrote for Worship Leader Magazine a few years ago. We’ll resume our reflections on the Daily Office July 5.

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“Bigger Voices”

My father was a victim of Alzheimer’s disease. It was hard to watch this once vibrantly inquisitive retired college professor lose his ability to remember. Along with his ability to remember, he lost his capacity for learning as well. For a brief stint, my dad stayed in a facility for the “pleasantly confused.” As we were moving him in to is new home in the memory care unit, I noticed flaps over the elevator controls.

“Why the flaps?” I asked a nurse.

“It’s how we keep residents from leaving their floor and wandering off.”

“I don’t get it. How does that work?”

“A person like your father doesn’t just have memory issues. Although he can’t remember old things, he can’t learn new things either. So no matter how many times he might see someone lift the flap and press the button underneath, he can’t learn it for himself.”

In that moment, I realized the phrase “pleasantly confused” was a nice way of describing something quite sad: being trapped in the present.

We are in the midst of one of the realignments — writer Phyllis Tickle calls them “rummage sales” — the faith goes through every 500 years or so. Around A.D. 500 there was a Great Consolidation, around A.D. 1000 a Great Schism, around A.D. 1500 a Great Reformation. Now we are experiencing, she maintains, a Great Emergence.

Just what it is that will emerge is unclear. Everything seems to be up for grabs — how to worship, whom to worship, why worship in the first place. One thing that is clear, at least to me, is this: privileged — or consigned — to live in such a time, we need wisdom greater than our own. When David Crowder sings, “I need a voice bigger than mine,” I feel him. Our capacity to contribute to the future hinges on our access to “bigger voices” that free us from entrapment in the present.

When I first started designing worship services, my main goal was to pick songs that complemented the sermon and that did not require changing the capo setting on my guitar. I was using a screw-on capo that took about a minute to adjust. So the ideal set of worship music consisted of songs that could be played, say, at “capo 3” (like Eb, Bb, or F) or in “open capo” (like C, G, or D). It was pretty confining.

Eventually, not only did I figure out other capos existed, more importantly I started teaching worship in a school that valued the theology of the Great Reformation. From those “bigger voices” of a half millennium ago, I learned the value of creeds and confessions in worship.

Recent years have taken me further back, to those “bigger voices” that gave us the Great Consolidation in the middle of the first millennium.

The 4th century theologian Athanasius of Alexandria argued that worship itself hangs on celebrating the Word’s taking on flesh to redeem all creation. If Christ is God, all is won. If not, nothing is.

The anonymous 2nd century singers of the so-called Odes of Solomon modeled worship as a participation in Jesus’s own song: “lifting his voice to the Most High and offering to him those who have become sons through him.”

In the late 6th century, Gregory the Great, bishop of Rome, launched a quest for a common pattern of chant for the Western church. From 1,500 years away, he gently rebukes our capitulation to niche marketing and musical apartheid.

From Jerusalem to Syria to Rome, churches’ reflection on Scripture led to a common pattern of gathering in praise, attending to the Word, communing at the Table, and joyfully charging back out into the world to minister Christ there.

Here’s the great thing about rummage sales. They give you a chance to unload some things that haven’t done you much good in a long time. They also give you a chance to rediscover things you’d forgotten you even had, but now can’t believe you’ve been able to live without. There is much the ancient church has to teach us about God, and about the how and why of worship.

My father’s disease left him living only in the present. He had no access to the past, nor to the future. Perhaps it’s our very access to worship’s past that holds the greatest promise for worship’s renewal in the future.

Be blessed this day, 

Reggie Kidd+

Image: "330_capo" by Lamerie is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0 

“Ancient Future” Resources for Worship Renewal

Robert Webber, Ancient Future Worship (Baker Books, 2008)

Athanasius of Alexandria, On the Incarnation (St. Vladimirs Seminary Press, 1993), with an introduction by C. S. Lewis. Text, minus Lewis introduction at http://ccel.org.

The Odes of Solomon Project, 2CD set (http://www.theodesproject.com/index.cfm).

Hippolytus, On the Apostolic Tradition (SVS Press, 2001)

St. Cyril of Jerusalem, On the Sacraments (SVS Press, 1995, 2017)

'Virtual' Church? 'Almost' Church?- Daily Devotions with the Dean

Monday • 6/28/2021

We’re going taking a detour from the Daily Office readings for a few days. Instead, we’ll be thinking through various facets of worship and how our Lord provides meaningful communion with him through our formal corporate worship as well as in individual worship in our daily devotions. The thoughts offered here are excerpts from articles I wrote for Worship Leader magazine a few years ago.  We’ll resume our reflections on the Daily Office July 5.

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 “Virtual Church — Really?”

“Maybe we should offer church online.”

“Really? You mean ‘virtual’ church? ‘Almost’ church?”

Several years ago, when my church began to think about offering a real-time and interactive, online way of attending its services, I had doubts. How, I wondered, could worship be authentic if we’re not all actually in the same room? Would “online church” be “narcissistic,” where people hide their actual selves behind a self-inflated electronic persona? Would “online church” be “excarnate,” where we lose person-to-person relationships and diminish the “embodiedness” of Jesus’s existence?

To the contrary, in some respects my experience of online church can leave me feeling more “connected” than sometimes when I’m in the same room with a lot of people I don’t know.

From Central FL, I exchange the Peace of Christ with former students in Argentina and Sweden. I meet a Ukrainian national our church has supported for years — and we talk about my maybe coming to Ukraine some time. Sue in western PA is surprised to find her parents in eastern PA worshiping online at the same time. Brad in MO has logged on for the first time, and is blown away when the worship leader welcomes him by name from the platform. Naomi in AL has a question, and Terri in LA responds before the “online minister” can chime in. Bob in NYC is crushingly lonely and he tells everybody how important being “with them” this morning is to him – he’s blitzed with encouraging remarks and promises of prayer. 

At a given service, we might have 2,000 in the building and 600 online. A few “onliners” worship anonymously, but most give their names and locations, and provide a picture. While the service is being webcast in real time, you can “chat” with anybody who’s logged in, as well as post comments to the whole group. An “online minister” presides, part greeter, part confidant, part prayer request gatherer, part answer-man, part “hall monitor.” And the interaction is non-stop. 

Week after week, people login from home, from an out of town Starbucks, from the mission field, or from an overseas military base. Cheerily, they put up with dropped connections or the occasional “off task” remark or rant by a fellow online worshiper. Some folks sing along. Some don’t. Most simply take in the service, but many “chatter” throughout: “Amen-ing” the songs or the message, asking for prayer, offering prayer and encouragement, posing and answering questions, suggesting improvements to the interface.  

Almost as if in answer to my fears about the loss of personal relationships, a committed team of “online ministers” has emerged — of whom I, to my surprise, have recently become a part. We recognize it wasn’t enough for Paul to write to the Romans; he was going to do everything he could to come to them (Rom 1:10-13). So, two of my ministry partners drove hundreds of miles just to be with a fellow who came to faith in Christ through the online ministry. This team works hard to provide a personal touch. They stay in touch by email and phone, following up questions and prayer requests, encouraging clusters among fellow “onliners” who live near each other. 

Almost as if in answer to my concern about people hiding their genuine selves behind “virtual selves,” one of our church members undertook a 10,000 mile odyssey in her van to visit “onliner” individuals, families, and clusters around the country. The images and stories she brought back were of vibrant faithfulness and obedience — of the desire to be anything but merely a virtual self. She met folks grateful to be included as “living stones” in a great house God is building by the Spirit (1 Pet 2:4-5). 

They are a part of the Story of Jesus. He came in bodily form, died and rose that we might one day have perfected bodies. He promised to return bodily, and in the meantime called us to be communities that continue his incarnate life in the world. So, while Jesus no longer, for now, occupies a single physical space on earth, we gather to celebrate a Presence that’s not confined to our gathering. 

Bob Webber used to say that while modern technology created the broadcasting church, postmodern technology was going to lead to an interactive church. Maybe he was right. If there weren’t a massive hunger for connectedness in our world, there would be no Facebook, no Twitter. If there weren’t an urgent quest for immediate, at-your-fingertips information, there would be no Wikipedia community. Wherever believers are, we find the same longings. Because it offers flexibility of expression and immediacy of fellowship (where it’s not weird if you ask people for prayer the moment you show up), perhaps “virtual” church will help “normal” church become more “real” church. 

Be blessed this day,

Reggie Kidd+

Image: Cathedral Church of St. Luke, Orlando, Florida, online service image

The Church Hasn't Died Over Time - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Friday • 6/25/2021

We’re going to take a detour from the Daily Office readings for a few days. Instead, we’ll be thinking through various facets of worship and how our Lord provides meaningful communion with him through our formal corporate worship as well as in individual worship in our daily devotions. The thoughts offered here are excerpts from articles I wrote for Worship Leader magazine a few years ago.  We’ll resume our reflections on the Daily Office July 5.

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 Rediscovering the Trinity and Spirit-led Worship, Part Three of Three

The Holy Spirit and Worship

There have sometimes been Sundays when a conversation at my house goes like this:

“What’s the matter?”

“I just want to quit.”

“Why?”

“Why? Easy. You were there. Didn’t you sense it?”

“Sense what?”

“The lack of worship. We were putting out all we had on the stage, and nothing was coming back. Worship just wasn’t happening.”

“How do you know? Because maybe people weren’t singing the way you thought they should be? You know the Spirit’s presence is about more than that. You can’t always see what God is doing. Sitting in my row I saw something you didn’t see: a woman who stopped singing because she had begun crying. I think the Spirit may be doing things His way, not yours.” 

Hmmm. 

What characterizes Spirit-led worship? Are there marks of the breath of the Spirit? 

The Spirit Creates Life

Jesus came back from the dead to breathe God’s very life into us. I’ve arrived at the place where I’m simply thankful to have been given eternal life in Christ, and to be allowed to share that life with others whom the Spirit has graciously made alive as well. I challenge myself to be more amazed at the presence of faith than depressed over possible signs of lack of faith. In other words, what I’m looking for as a prime marker of the Spirit’s presence in worship is this: by God’s grace, redeemed sinners show up seeking more grace. 

I believe that there is a radiantly alive presence in our midst when we worship. That presence is Jesus who has become “life-giving Spirit.” While bodily he is in heaven constantly advocating for us before the Father (Heb 7:25), he is simultaneously among us by the Spirit, breathing God’s presence into us, proclaiming the Father’s name, and orchestrating our praise (Heb 2:12). 

He’s there whether I feel him or not. He’s in charge and is working his good pleasure, whether I hit all my marks or not. He’s constantly compensating for all my weaknesses and mistakes, and perhaps more importantly, for all my strengths and the things I get “right.” 

I have to remind myself the “condensation on the sunglasses” is not necessarily about any of the things I do or don’t do. Chesterton suggests that the only way to explain the fact that the church hasn’t died over time as one cultural, political, or philosophical support after another has fallen away, is that there is a Presence in the church that won’t go away. If Arianism, Gnosticism, Pelagianism, imperial patronage, humanism, scientism, modernism, and postmodernism can’t make the Holy Spirit go away, I probably can’t either. 

The Spirit Makes One out of Many 

The worship of God now takes place not in a single, localized house of brick and mortar where the songs of Zion are sung in but one tongue. God’s house of worship — where “Spirit and Truth” reside — is worldwide! It consists of a near infinity of “living stones” who happen to sing in many tongues. Beginning with the likes of respectable Nicodemus and the fallen woman at the well, the Holy Spirit has been making a worldwide community of worship that is greater than the sum of its parts. Amazingly, under the baton of the Spirit of Christ, those many tongues make “one voice” (Rom 15:6).  

“Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace,” says Paul (Eph 4:3). The Spirit’s unity is most evident, I’ve come to believe, precisely where there is diversity rather than uniformity. Unity is not difficult to sustain when everyone shares the same preferences - musical tastes, “age and stage” affinity, theological nuance, Myers-Briggs profiles. When there’s unity despite differing penchants, a unity that is born out of heroic forbearance and costly deference, it seems more likely that it is the Spirit who is at work. 

The Spirit Exalts Others 

Fourth century theologian Basil the Great’s defense of the deity of the Holy Spirit is skillful because it is indirect. Basil observes that Scripture has many direct statements about the divinity of God the Father, fewer about the divinity of God the Son, and precious few about the divinity of God the Holy Spirit. You can’t help but conclude, he insists, that the Holy Spirit is God in the same way that the Father and the Son are — otherwise, to baptize in the name of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit would be blasphemous. Nonetheless, it’s almost as though there is in Scripture a modesty about the Spirit’s identity. 

A fundamental characteristic of the Holy Spirit is that he does not call attention to himself: “He will glorify me, for he will take what is mine and declare it to you,” said Jesus (John 14:16). 

Some people walk into a room and they make everybody else feel larger. Some walk in and make everybody else feel smaller. The first breathe life into the room because they make everybody else the center of their attention. The latter suck the life out of the room because they make themselves the center of attention. Here is a principal way of knowing when it’s the Spirit at work, and when it’s the flesh. 

That was Paul’s problem with the church at Corinth. He wanted those brothers and sisters to understand that worship is always about the exaltation of Jesus and the edification of others, not the exaltation of self and the display of personal giftedness (1 Cor 14). That’s why Paul encouraged them — and he would, I’m certain, encourage us likewise — to promote in worship the real way of the Spirit, the way of love (see 1 Cor 13). 

Breathe in. Breathe out. 

Of course, there’s so much more to say about the Spirit and worship — about the mission, about the gifts, about uniting old and new. But for now, this will have to suffice: not unlike that lifeless puppy I saw on the side of the road, we were dead to intimacy with our Maker, and dead to the way our relationships with one another were to mirror the eternal communion within the Trinity — until the Son came, died, rose, and breathed the breath of God into us.

As a worship leader there’s probably nothing greater that I can contribute to worship than making sure that I keep breathing God’s breath myself. In the Word daily — breathe in. In prayer daily — breathe out. Confess “my stuff” — breathe in. Lift his name in praise and adoration — breathe out. Come to the Table — breathe in. Wish my neighbor Christ’s peace — breathe out. Ponder the wonder of his grace to me — breathe in. Find the lost, tell the story, feed the hungry — breathe out.  

Be blessed this day,

Reggie Kidd+

Image: H. Zell, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Stained glass window Holy Spirit in the nothern wall of the Iglesia de San Bartolomé de Tirajana, San Bartolomé de Tirajana, Gran Canaria, Canary Islands, Spain

A New Order of Worship - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Thursday • 6/24/2021

We’re going to take a detour from the Daily Office readings for a few days. Instead, we’ll be thinking through various facets of worship and how our Lord provides meaningful communion with him through our formal corporate worship as well as in individual worship in our daily devotions. The thoughts offered here are excerpts from articles I wrote for Worship Leader magazine a few years ago.  We’ll resume our reflections on the Daily Office July 5.

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 Rediscovering the Trinity and Spirit-led Worship, Part Two of Three

The Spirit in John’s Gospel

If we reflect on some of Jesus’ sayings and conversations in John’s gospel we get a glimpse into the vision that animated Jesus that day he cleansed the Temple. 

The Spirit has to remake the innermost parts of us, he tells Israel’s preeminent (but clueless) teacher, Nicodemus (John 3). The Spirit will bring together in worship of the Father both a respectable, over-educated Jew like Nicodemus and a promiscuous, disreputable non-Jew like the woman at the well in Samaritan Sychar (John 3 and 4). The Spirit will create such worship through the One who is the Truth (4:24), but who also is the Way and the Life (14:6). 

Besides the Passover, the one named festival in John’s gospel is the harvest-time Feast of Tabernacles, a celebration of God’s provision in the wilderness during the exodus. On the last day of the Feast, celebrants pour out water to remember the way God had taken care of his people’s thirst in the wilderness. While that is taking place on one such occasion, Jesus steps forward and declares that anybody who is really thirsty needs to come to him. Conjuring Ezekiel 47’s image of rivers flowing out from the threshold of the Temple, Jesus says that he himself will provide the Spirit for everyone who comes to drink from him (John 7:37-39). 

In his Final Discourse, Jesus outlines the transfer of life from himself, to the Spirit, to his followers, and then to the world (John 13-17). 

Jesus explains that his disciples will experience an absence that, incongruously, makes his presence nearer. They will do greater works (14:12). All the time that Jesus has been “alongside them” (14:25), the Holy Spirit has also been “alongside them” (14:17). The Spirit who came upon the Son “and remained on him” (1:32) at his baptism has been accomplishing the Father’s works through Jesus. Because Jesus goes away, that divine presence — the divine breath — will not be just alongside, but “inside them” (14:17). After his bodily departure, the Holy Spirit coming inside them will be the means by which Jesus himself comes back “to them” (14:18) — with a presence that is better than his pre-death and pre-resurrection presence. A closeness emerges that some have called “coinherence,” a mutual indwelling: “I in my Father and you in me and I in you” (14:20). 

Spirit Representing Trinity

What is so utterly characteristic of the Holy Spirit, “the Spirit of Truth,” is that he does not come to represent himself, but the Son and the Father who have sent him (15:26; 16:12-15). In this, the Spirit reflects the Son, who has come not to serve his own ends, but his Father’s (see John 5:19,30; 14:28). As the Son has glorified the Father, the Spirit will glorify the Son (17:4; 16:14a). He will do so by explaining the things of the Son to us and by convicting the world of sin and righteousness and judgment (16:14b, 8). 

What the Spirit does is create among us a communion of love that externalizes in time and space the eternal communion of love that has existed from before time and space. What the Spirit creates among us is a life of mutual deference — a life Jesus models at the beginning of the Final Discourse in the footwashing (John 13) and prays for at the Discourse’s close: “… that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me” (17:21). 

With literary artistry, John describes Jesus’ arrest, suffering, death, and resurrection, but then announces Jesus’ ascension without ever describing it (20:17). Instead, John provides a number of vignettes illustrating the way Jesus prepared his followers for life without his physical presence. The vignettes are lessons in how to worship now under this new regime of “in Spirit and Truth” (4:24). 

The promise of a new order of worship that Jesus had announced at the Temple cleansing receives fulfillment when Jesus first appears in his risen body — the very body that he said would be the beginning of the building of a new house for worship. Pointedly, Jesus tells his gathered disciples: “As the Father has sent me, so I am sending you” (20:21). Dramatically, he breathes on them, and says, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” By his breath, mere disciples become apostles, equipped to build God’s house and to lead worship “in Spirit and Truth.”

The Book of Acts has its own way of telling the same story, first, with the transfer of Jesus’ ministry here on earth (the Gospel According to Luke) to his ministry at the right hand of God by means of the Holy Spirit (Acts 2:29-36), and second, with Pentecost’s amazing manifestations of the new life rippling from Jerusalem to the ends of the earth. 

The apostle Paul, too, tells the same story through his developed theology of how the “Last Adam” became “Life-Giving Spirit” (1 Cor 15:45) in order to make dead people come to life (Eph 2:1-10) and to unite once estranged people into a dwelling for God (Eph 2:11-22). 

But John’s gospel has taken us to the heart of what the Spirit of God effects in our worship. 

Tomorrow, the third installment of thoughts on the ministry of the Holy Spirit in worship…

Be blessed this day,

Reggie Kidd+

Image: Guercino (1591-1666), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Condensation on the Sunglasses - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Wednesday • 6/23/2021

We’re going to take a detour from the Daily Office readings for a few days. Instead, we’ll be thinking through various facets of worship and how our Lord provides meaningful communion with him through our formal corporate worship as well as in individual worship in our daily devotions. The thoughts offered here are excerpts from articles I wrote for Worship Leader magazine a few years ago.  We’ll resume our reflections on the Daily Office July 5.

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Rediscovering the Trinity and Spirit-led Worship, Part One of Three

One minute the puppy was playing on the side of the street. The next, he darted into traffic. That was it. I saw him spin off a passing car’s wheel and collapse in a lump at the side of the road. A police officer happened by and stopped to see if he could help. I expected him to feel for a heartbeat. Instead, he took off his sunglasses and held them to the puppy’s nose. 

Worship Leaders and the Spirit

Worship leaders are always on the lookout for condensation on the sunglasses. We develop an acute sense for when we think the Lord is in the house and when he’s not. When he’s there, there’s life — maybe loud life, maybe quiet life, maybe joyful life, maybe sorrowful life. When it feels dead, it seems like he’s not there. 

The thing worship leaders fear the most? The absence of God’s breath. It’s the thing we work hardest not to allow: if we’re liturgical, by making sure we’ve got every prescribed element in the right place; if we’re Reformed, by making sure we’re not doing anything Scripture doesn’t require; if we’re “praise and worship,” by following the worship funnel’s progression from loud to soft; if we’re emergent, by giving everybody unlimited, unprogrammed, authentic options. All along, though, if we have any sense at all, we’re keenly aware that Jesus says, “The wind (the Spirit) blows where it will” (John 3:8). 

Worship Leaders and the Trinity

Because the theology of the trinity seems to be more implicit than explicit, we Christians have struggled mightily to explain the triune God we know. Writer G. K. Chesterton observes that at the bottom of everything is a “holy family.” Instead of Judaism’s or Islam’s single god-entity, we find an eternal communion of love. Instead of polytheism’s riot of competitive god-egos, we find a harmony of mutual deference.

Theologian Alexander Schmemann describes the godhead this way: there is an “eternal Lover” (the Father), an “eternally Beloved” (the Son), and “eternal Love itself” (the Holy Spirit). As Love itself, the Holy Spirit’s role is to make that eternal communion between Lover and Beloved present to us. It’s no accident that the biggest clue Scripture provides for the identity of the Holy Spirit is the metaphor of “breath.” Hebrew uses the same word for “breath” and for “spirit,” as does Greek. The Holy Spirit’s job is to breathe into us that great Loving that exists between Lover and Beloved, drawing us into something early church fathers described as a dance. 

Leading worship is the privilege it is because it amounts to cooperating with the Holy Spirit in inviting people back into the dance. 

The One Worship Leader and the Spirit

One of the most gripping moments in all of Scripture takes place when Jesus declares a new pattern of worship from the Temple in Jerusalem in the second chapter of John’s gospel. This is the day the one genuine Worship Leader comes to church and applies the sunglasses test. Here stands the One who bears the title “Liturgist of the Holy Things and of the True Tent (Gk, skēnē)” (Heb 8:1). Here is God’s presence “tenting” among us — that’s literally what John 1:14 says: “the Word became flesh and dwelt (Gk., skēnoun) among us.” The eternally Beloved has come to the eternal Lover’s house to see if there’s a hint of Love’s breath in the place, and he does not find what he’s looking for. 

Jesus stands there in the Jerusalem Temple. It is, significantly, the Passover (John 2:13). Where now is the Presence that had rescued the children of Israel from Egypt and then walked beside them in the figure of cloud and fire, escorting them to the land of promise (Exod 13:12)? Where is the Presence that had taken up residence in the original Tabernacle-tent, the “mobile field unit” God had commissioned for himself while his people were on the move (Exod 40:34-38)? Where is the Shekinah Glory that at its dedication so filled this building’s predecessor — the Temple Solomon had built to give God a more permanent residence — that the priests had had to run for cover? 

… then the house, the house of the Lord, was filled with a cloud, so that the priests could not stand to minister because of the cloud, for the glory of the Lord filled the house of God (2 Chron 5:13b-14). 

For the Temple leadership of Jesus’ day, it’s time to run for cover again. And, ironically, for the same reason. The Presence is back. The house that was still standing — the jewel of Herod the Great’s extensive building program throughout Israel — is about to lose its franchise. It is time for a new house for a new form of the presence of God. 

Holy Emotion

It’s hard to know what synapses were firing for Jesus the day he cleansed the temple — you feel almost blasphemous trying to imagine it. But the Gospel According to John does unfold a certain logic for us. 

Out of a bubbling, broiling passion for his Father’s house — an emotion the Psalmist originally and now John chastely calls “zeal” — Jesus weaves himself a whip (John 2:15-17). Shocking, given the traditional portrait of the cow-eyed, “gentle Galilean.” With the whip he brings a temporary halt to the financial exchanges that enable the daily sacrifices — and in this season, the Passover sacrifices — to proceed. Implicitly, he declares that, beginning with the whips that would be wielded against his own back, a singular Passover Sacrifice is in the making that will end all other sacrifices. 

But more, he announces it is time for a new building project: “Tear down this building (not the physical Temple, but Jesus’ own body) and I will raise it up again” (John 2:19). Different materials would comprise this building: “He spoke of the temple of his body” (John 2:21). Peter, who was no doubt there that day, would later explain the architecture in terms of the risen Jesus becoming “the head of the corner” (or “keystone,” as the Jerusalem Bible so nicely puts it) and of regenerate believers becoming “living stones” in a Spiritual house (1 Pet 2:4-7). Condensation will return to the sunglasses — the new, living house will be filled with the very breath of God, his Holy Spirit. 

More about the Holy Spirit, and about Jesus’s house-building project tomorrow… 

Be blessed this day,

Reggie Kidd+

Image: Millenium Singh, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Our Offerings Imitate Jesus's Offering - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Tuesday • 6/22/2021

We’re going to take a detour from the Daily Office readings for a few days. Instead, we’ll be thinking through various facets of worship and how our Lord provides meaningful communion with him through our formal corporate worship as well as in individual worship in our daily devotions. The thoughts offered here are excerpts from articles I wrote for Worship Leader magazine a few years ago.  We’ll resume our reflections on the Daily Office July 5.

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“One Offering”

The offertory has always seemed an odd thing to me. When I was a kid, the offering followed the sermon, and for all intents and purposes concluded the service. I thought this was where you paid the pastor for the sermon. I remember thinking, “That’s a lot of pressure for a preacher.”

In recent months, the pressure preachers seem to feel is to how to convince people to give generously during hard times.   

The question of generosity became an especially pressing one for me in 2008, when the world’s economy tanked. Like other families, mine, too, was affected.  

Nevertheless, it proved to be a ruinous blessing. It was a time to rediscover the generosity of God, and to give thanks. Our refrigerator was, after all, still full. And it’s been a time to remember that ours is the God of the “refrigerator-less.”

The church we presently attend takes up an offering as part of its weekly communion, following the Book of Common Prayer:

Representatives of the congregation bring the people’s offerings of bread and wine, and money or other gifts, to the deacon or celebrant.

The pattern is ancient, and embodies profound truth. The offering begins the ministry of the Table, which follows the Ministry of the Word. Ushers pass plates, and then, on behalf of the whole congregation, bring forward a dual offering: the elements for the Table and the monetary donations for the church. (In other times and places, the donations might include livestock or produce or handiwork.) 

A prayer of “Great Thanksgiving” follows, celebrating God’s attributes along with his creative and redemptive acts. Then the prayer asks the Lord to bless the gifts — explicitly the bread and wine, implicitly the monetary donations.   

For whatever reasons, in many churches (like the church of my upbringing) the offertory is no longer linked to communion, and I wonder if that’s created a disconnect between our offerings and the whole story of redemption. 

The Table reminds me of God’s extravagant generosity. He was generous not just in word, but in deed. Jesus came, and he made the one Offering that counts. “Christ loved us and gave himself for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God” (Eph. 5:2). The only true worship is Jesus, Offering and Offerer. Staggering gift and overwhelming love, on lavish display especially at the Table.  

When the “stuff” of his redemption (the communion elements) is wedded to the “stuff” of my life (my gifts), my story becomes folded into the Bible’s story line. As the bread and wine embody Jesus’s totally giving himself for me, so my gifts bespeak my surrender to his total claim on me. “You are not your own,” Paul reminds me, “you were bought with a price” (1 Cor. 9:19b-20a). Not only me, but all my stuff, everything that’s in my wallet — it’s all his.  

More, our offerings imitate Jesus’s Offering, and are made holy by that One Offering. The bread and wine establish no merit — the merit is all of his death and life. The money is not a payment for the sermon. It’s a means of saying, “Thank you for rescue. Thank you for freedom from the Egypt of sin. Now, who around me lives in a kind of Egypt, and how may I — on your behalf — participate in their rescue?” 

Moses had required: “… you shall love the alien, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt” (Deut. 10:19) — in effect, have an eye to the “refrigerator-less” among you. Now Jesus commands: “A new commandment I give you: that you love one another as I have loved you” (John 13:34). The generosity of the Exodus with its “mighty hand and an outstretched arm” yields to the generosity of the Incarnation with its arms stretched out on a cruel cross. I give, in part, to participate in God’s care for those still in need of redemption. 

Some truths are better perceived than conceived, to paraphrase Marshall McLuhan. One such truth is the dynamic of divine generosity, displayed most extravagantly at his Table. God’s generosity comes to us in his Son, then calls forth from us an answering generosity, expressed first in the offering of ourselves back to him in thanks, and second in the offering of ourselves and our gifts to one another and to a needy world.

Be blessed this day,

Reggie Kidd+

Image: Bill Nicholls, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Always There Is One Voice - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Monday • 6/21/2021

We’re going to take a detour from the Daily Office readings for a few days. Instead, we’ll be thinking through various facets of worship and how our Lord provides meaningful communion with him through our formal corporate worship as well as in individual worship in our daily devotions. The thoughts offered here are excerpts from articles I wrote for Worship Leader magazine a few years ago.  We’ll resume our reflections on the Daily Office July 5.

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“One Voice”

Sometimes it takes just one voice.

“You know, some of us in the congregation are visual learners. We’d be helped if you put some art behind the lyrics you project.” 

That one voice put me on a quest to craft worship that “shows and tells.”

“I love the contemporary songs we do in worship. But when you include the hymns I grew up with, something special happens for me. The faith I’m figuring out for myself and the faith my folks tried to instill in me stop competing with each other.” 

That one voice made me more conscious about trans-generational worship.

There’s another kind of voice, too. I teach. At the end of every course, students have a chance to tell me (and my administration) what they think about my teaching. Nearly every semester, one student hates a course I’ve taught.. That one voice makes me reflect on how to do better. 

My friend Joel Hunter is one of the most perceptive people I know. One of the wisest things he ever said was, “The way to handle criticism is to listen hard for the One Voice that’s always embedded there. Sometimes you have to completely ignore specific criticisms. Sometimes they are right on target. Always, though, Jesus has something for you.” 

Always there is One Voice.  

While introducing the concept of “mere Christianity” to his readers, C. S. Lewis acknowledged that the specific forms Christianity takes are myriad, confusing, and seemingly contradictory. Nonetheless, he maintained, at the center of the church’s life “each communion is really closest to every other in spirit, if not in doctrine.” 

And this suggests that at the centre of each there is something, or a Someone, who against all divergences of belief, all differences of temperament, all memories of mutual persecution, speaks with the same voice.

I think I know what he means. I’ve been hearing that “same voice” recently. 

On Sunday mornings I worship at an Episcopal/Anglican cathedral, with full formal liturgy (largely chanted), incense, lectionary readings, a less-than-20-minute homily, weekly Eucharist, gorgeous old school architecture, stained glass windows and classical music.  

On Sunday evenings I worship at a trans-denominational mega-church, with infinitely variable “content-driven” worship, a 30-minute story-laced sermon, a state of the art worship center with stunning electronic visuals and polished rock-n-roll music. 

One Sunday, both services happened to pivot around the same gospel reading. In the cathedral, the passage simply came up in the normal sequence of the Christian liturgical calendar and its telling of the story of Jesus. Readings in the weeks before led up to this passage, and the OT and the epistle readings of the day illuminated it. The service created the quietly satisfying sense that we were on a journey together, and this week was an expected and encouraging stop along the way.

Later that day in the mega-church, the identical passage seemed at first to come out of nowhere. But it was powerfully accentuated by lights and music, and in the end vividly underscored a point from the sermon. Few eyes were dry, and few people could have missed how Jesus had come to meet them. 

On reflection, I concluded that Jesus had made a point about who he is in both services. Through one church Jesus voiced the settled resolve with which he came among us. Through the other he voiced the immediacy of his presence with us. In both, as Lewis might have put it, he spoke with the same voice. 

In Christ, every voice matters. Yours. Mine. Those who have been. Those who will be. Big steeples. Little steeples. No steeples. Visual learners. Auditory learners. Kinesthetic learners. Psalm singers. Praise song singers. Hymn singers. Above them all there is One Voice who has spoken in Scripture, who has blessed many distinct voices in the history of his church, and who is now raising up new voices for ministry in a future we know to be his. 

Be blessed this day,

Reggie Kidd+

Image: "Shandi-lee {pieces II}" by Shandi-lee is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Hello Darkness, My Old Friend - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Friday • 6/18/2021
Friday of the Third Week After Pentecost (Proper 6)

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 88; 1 Samuel 3:1–21; Acts 2:37–47; Luke 21:5–19

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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To me, Psalm 88 is the “Hello darkness, my old friend, I’ve come to talk with you again” psalm. Every time I read it, I come under the spell of Simon and Garfunkel’s ode to loneliness and existential worry, “I am a rock, I am an island.” I am grateful that, in Psalm 88, our Bible includes a similarly raw statement of angst. 

The psalmist teeters on the brink of unwelcomed death: “[M]y life is at the brink of the grave. I am counted among those who go down to the Pit” (Psalm 88:3b,4a). He feels abandoned by God, and fears eternal separation: “Lost among the dead … Your anger weighs upon me heavily … Will your loving-kindness be declared in the grave?” (Psalm 88:5a,8a,12a). He is utterly alone in his misery: “You have put my friends far from me; you have made me to be abhorred by them … My friend and my neighbor you have put away from me, and darkness is my only companion” (Psalm 88:9ab,19).

Pride and pretense in Luke. A thousand years later in the time of Christ’s earthly ministry, nothing has changed. The Sadducean aristocracy oversees a spectacular theatre of worship in Herod’s shrine to his own ego. Denying the idea of resurrection, they accommodate the faith to their earthly satisfactions. Scribes parade their piety: “walk[ing] around in long robes, and lov[ing] to be greeted with respect in the marketplace, and to have the best seats in the synagogues and places of honor at banquets. They devour widows’ houses and for the sake of appearance say long prayers” (Luke 20:46–47). Meanwhile, rich people make a show of the generosity with which they underwrite all the pageantry.  

God upsets the apple cart. But it’s all an illusion, insists the Bible—as proof of which God inserts himself to upset the apple cart. What Eli and sons cannot snuff out is the reality of the God of the temple, who in his own time and his own way will reclaim his sacred space. Eli’s line will end (see 1 Samuel 4:11,18; 22:18–19), except for one descendant who will carry the sad tale of his family’s religious treachery (see the account of Abiathar in 1 Kings 1–2). What the Sadducees cannot eliminate from Scripture in their desire to flatten it to an exclusively this-worldly faith is the mystery of God’s Messiah (and David’s son) having an eternal and divine existence. How indeed, Jesus asks, can David’s son be David’s Lord, as Psalm 110 says he is—unless, David’s son be more than man, but God?! And unless Scripture’s promises be about more than life and prosperity and success in this life? 

What redeems the grit and honesty of this psalm is the fact that it is, after all, a prayer. It isn’t hurled into empty darkness. The psalmist opens: “O Yahweh, my God, my Savior, by day and night I cry to you. Let my prayer enter into your presence; incline your ear to my lamentation” (Psalm 88:1). The psalmist addresses God by his personal name, Yahweh, the name he gave when he came to redeem (see Exodus 3–4). It’s “my God” and “my Savior.” And the addressee is not “darkness, my old friend.” It’s a living presence whom the psalmist seeks: “Let my prayer enter into your presence; incline your ear….” There’s a stubbornness about biblical faith—it cries out to the light in the deepest of darkness. 

Still, if you and I don’t sense the darkness and the aloneness of Psalm 88, either we haven’t lived long enough or we’re not paying close enough attention. Nor are we able to appreciate the wonder that fills people who dare to believe in the Bible’s promise of rescue and redemption. 

Today’s other passages affirm both the raw honesty and the vibrant hope. 

1 Samuel: good news and bad news. In a day in which word from Yahweh was rare and visions were not widespread, Eli learns that change is in the offing. Eli recognizes that the voice awakening his ward Samuel from his slumbers is Yahweh’s. Israel’s God is on the move again, advancing his program of redemption and restoration. That good news comes with a downside. The consequences of Eli’s negligence and lack of spiritual leadership over his sons are painful. Nonetheless, his trust in Yahweh gives him acceptance: “He is Yahweh; let him do what he thinks good” (1 Samuel 3:18 JB).  

In Luke, Jesus prepares his disciples for cataclysmic change ahead. The stone and mortar temple that had (in one form or another) been at the center of God’s relationship with his people for 1,000 years had reached the end of its “shelf life.” Christ’s sacrifice will have proven to be the final goal of that building’s existence. In advance of a day in which God’s house would be composed of “living stones” (1 Peter 2:5), Jesus says of the recently and exquisitely refurbished Second Temple, “[N]ot one stone will be left upon another; all will be thrown down” (Luke 21:6). 

In Acts, Peter begins to reap the benefits of that cataclysmic change. Tongues of fire have descended from heaven, dissolving barriers to communication. God begins to build his new house with converts from all around the Mediterranean Basin whom providence had brought to Jerusalem for the Jewish “Pentecost,” a celebration of the first fruits and of the giving of the Law. 

Little did they know the new power the term Pentecost would hereafter take on. They themselves become the first fruits of a new humanity, “ground zero” for the Holy Spirit’s new regime of life. Hearts change, as do ways of living. New believers share meals as well as possessions. They absorb the apostles’ teaching about how God has fulfilled ancient promises through Jesus his Son. They marvel at God’s marvelous works, and in prayer and praise, they experience worship in a new way. In their growing numbers and in their “favor with all the people,” they taste the blessing that God’s in-breaking means for the whole world. 

When the night is dark, when the ceiling seems impenetrable, and when nobody seems to listen or to care, may you and I nonetheless penetrate the dark with our cry, “O Yawheh, my God, my Savior.” As we immerse ourselves in God’s story of redemption and find our place at the table of fellowship in his Son, may we find the Spirit bringing comfort and courage to our hearts. 

Be blessed this day, 

Reggie Kidd+

Image: "Wretched" by pcgn7 is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0

Lord of Heaven and Earth - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Thursday • 6/17/2021
Thursday of the Third Week After Pentecost (Proper 6)

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 34; 1 Samuel 2:27–36; Acts 2:22–36; Luke 20:41–21:4

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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Anyone who has had a taste of power, prestige, and wealth knows of the dangers these things can present. The feeling can be one of entitlement. The powerful may feel that the weak are weak because they deserve to be weak. Important people may feel their own importance is self-evident, as is the unimportance of the unimportant. The “haves” may feel that they have, because they ought to have and, and likewise, that the “have nots” have not, because they ought not to have. It’s a seductive logic. 

Pride and pretense in 1 Samuel. It’s a logic to which Eli and his sons have succumbed. In the auspicious line of the original Hebrew priest Aaron, they are principal overseers of worship at Shiloh, the center of the Israelites’ religious life at the end of the period of the Judges. The arrogant sons, Hophni and Phinehas, overreach their legitimate prerogative of receiving support from the people’s offerings. So they put on a good show. They vest in sacred garments, ascend the altar, and offer incense (2 Samuel 2:28). Their glory entitles them, they feel, to demand more than their due. They blatantly transgress sexual boundaries, because, well, because they can. Eli, the father, fails to rein his sons in because he, too, profits from their profligacy: “[You] honor your sons more than me by fattening yourselves on the choicest parts of every offering of my people Israel” (2 Samuel 2:29).

Pride and pretense in Luke. A thousand years later in the time of Christ’s earthly ministry, nothing has changed. The Sadducean aristocracy oversees a spectacular theatre of worship in Herod’s shrine to his own ego. Denying the idea of resurrection, they accommodate the faith to their earthly satisfactions. Scribes parade their piety: “walk[ing] around in long robes, and lov[ing] to be greeted with respect in the marketplace, and to have the best seats in the synagogues and places of honor at banquets. They devour widows’ houses and for the sake of appearance say long prayers” (Luke 20:46–47). Meanwhile, rich people make a show of the generosity with which they underwrite all the pageantry.  

God upsets the apple cart. But it’s all an illusion, insists the Bible—as proof of which God inserts himself to upset the apple cart. What Eli and sons cannot snuff out is the reality of the God of the temple, who in his own time and his own way will reclaim his sacred space. Eli’s line will end (see 1 Samuel 4:11,18; 22:18–19), except for one descendant who will carry the sad tale of his family’s religious treachery (see the account of Abiathar in 1 Kings 1–2). What the Sadducees cannot eliminate from Scripture in their desire to flatten it to an exclusively this-worldly faith is the mystery of God’s Messiah (and David’s son) having an eternal and divine existence. How indeed, Jesus asks, can David’s son be David’s Lord, as Psalm 110 says he is—unless, David’s son be more than man, but God?! And unless Scripture’s promises be about more than life and prosperity and success in this life? 

The “little people” who see things aright in Acts and Luke. And so, the “little people” have their say: in Acts, the uneducated Galilean fisherman Peter astounds the Jerusalem residents and pilgrims. God has established Jesus as the Lord and Messiah David had prophesied. Peter explains that the rejection of Jesus was, ironically, part of the proof that Jesus was predestined to suffer, and then rise to take his rightful place as Lord of heaven and earth. .. And Luke’s poor widow models the kind of generosity that matters to God: a generosity of open heart and open hand: “…she out of her poverty has put in all she had to live on” (Luke 21:4). 

Today’s readings stand as a bold affirmation of David’s prayer in today’s Psalm:

The eyes of the Lord are upon the righteous, *
    and his ears are open to their cry.
The face of the Lord is against those who do evil, *
    to root out the remembrance of them from the earth.
The righteous cry, and the Lord hears them *
    and delivers them from all their troubles.
The Lord is near to the brokenhearted *
    and will save those whose spirits are crushed. …
The Lord ransoms the life of his servants, *
    and none will be punished who trust in him (Psalm 34:15–18,22 BCP).

Living beyond the illusion of power, prestige, and wealth, and living in the reality of God’s vindication, protection, and provision in Christ, may you be blessed this day.

Reggie Kidd+

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

The Glory of Pentecost - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Wednesday • 6/16/2021
Wednesday of the Third Week After Pentecost (Proper 6)

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 119:97–120; 1 Samuel 2:12–26; Acts 2:1–21; Luke 20:27–40

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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1 Samuel: abusers of spiritual power. Eli’s sons are gluttons, lechers, and abusers of power. They demand offerings to which they have no right; they receive sexual favors from women who facilitate temple worship. Their story is ever a strong warning against clergy abuse of power, especially for gluttonous, avaricious, and lecherous ends. 

It’s an absolutely horrifying tableau. The sons had been set apart to handle holy things. Those things—the temple and its precincts and artifacts, not to mention the people who go there to be sanctified, and the fellow servants, especially the women, who support the ministry of consecrating all of life to the Lord—it’s all, in fact, objectively holy. There is a weightiness and purity to God’s own being that is constantly pressing down upon it all, ready to break in, or alternatively, that is constantly within it, ready to break out.

Luke: dullards of spiritual reality. In corollary fashion, and for whatever reason, members of the Sadducee party of Jesus’s day have insulated themselves from the wonder of the living God. Whether it’s the luxury they enjoy by virtue of an aristocratic pedigree, or the impressiveness of the trappings of temple finery they oversee, they have relegated faith to a “this-worldly” dimension. They read Scripture as though it is aimed simply at giving meaning to this life. 

Jesus rebukes them for not having the spiritual sensors that should have indicated that a God who is called “the God of (the long departed) Abraham and Isaac and Jacob” is necessarily a God of the living, and therefore, necessarily (given the Bible’s high view of creation), a God who will raise the dead. 

Acts: recipients of God’s presence. The glory of Pentecost is the breaking in, or breaking out, of God’s holy presence in blessing. That numinous presence had been manifest from time to time in Israel’s history: at the burning bush, on Mt. Sinai, during the desert journey, in David’s singing, at the temple dedication. Now, in the Book of Acts, the Spirit of holiness breaks in, or breaks out, at the beginning of a permanent taking-up-of-residence in a people made holy by the once-for-all, sanctifying work of God’s Son on the Cross. 

In the past, the Spirit would come temporarily upon notables like a Moses or a David—or even a Saul. Now there’s a democratization of the Spirit, for the Spirit of God comes to old and young, men and women, servant and free. The spectacular ability suddenly to communicate in “every native language” (literally, dialektos) seems to be not a permanent and abiding work of the Spirit. For the nearly 2,100 years that have passed since Pentecost, missionaries have had to go to language school to learn to minister in languages not their own. But this extraordinary display in Jerusalem (and to be repeated in Samaria, at Cornelius’s house, and in Ephesus—see Acts 8,10–11,19) depicts the power of the Spirit to unite people of all languages around the singular name of the Lord Jesus and his Father.  

Gracious God and Father, deliver us from pride and presumption when it comes to your holy name. 

Lord Jesus Christ, give us grace to live with a clear-eyed focus on, and an eager anticipation of, the Day of your return and our resurrection.

Spirit of Holiness, dwell in us more deeply that we may speak to whomever you send us lovingly, truthfully, and compellingly of the grace of the Lord Jesus. 

Be blessed this day,

Reggie Kidd+

Image: Pentecostal Icon. Unknown author, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

God's Name Inscribed - Daily Devotions with the Dean

, p. 94)Tuesday • 6/15/2021
Tuesday of the Third Week After Pentecost (Proper 6)

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 78; 1 Samuel 1:21–2:11; Acts 1:15–26; Luke 20:19–26

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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The Bible’s basic premise is that from Genesis 3 on everything is upside down…and that God is in the business of putting things right side up again. 

We’ve recently read Deuteronomy’s warning about making idols out of human figures: “…take care and watch yourselves closely, so that you do not act corruptly by making an idol for yourselves, in the form of any figure—the likeness of male or female” (Deuteronomy 4:15b–16). The reason for this particular proscription is that we humans ourselves bear God’s image. We are not made to worship ourselves, but instead to worship the Lord. We do so in no small part by offering ourselves as emissaries of his presence and rule. It is a high dignity. And the whole thing gets subverted when we reverse things. 

Luke. One of the ways the Roman Caesars projected their own presence and rule over their empire was through coinage that bore their image and name. Jesus’s enemies try to get him to declare himself to be either a collaborationist or an insurrectionist: support the despised Roman overlords by affirming Roman taxation and lose the support of the people, or throw in his lot with the revolutionaries and get himself arrested. It seems like a clever ruse. 

Let Caesar have his coins, Jesus asserts, and by implication, his pretense of presence and his time-limited rule. But the tagline is even more significant: “…and to God the things that are God’s” (Luke 20:25). Each one of us bears the image of the ruler of the universe. Each one of us has God’s name inscribed into the fabric of our being. The fealty, tribute, service, obeisance, honor, worship, and praise we owe to him is far more significant than whatever demands an earthly ruler may impose upon us. God’s presence is ubiquitous, and his rule inescapable. 

Because humans have made idols out of lesser things, including “the likeness of male or female,” the universe has been knocked off its axis. No sooner, though, did Adam and Eve start us on this sad path than God began the slow, but inexorable, process of putting things back into kilter. 

1 Samuel. Biblical saints have recognized God’s commitment to fix things from the very beginning—they recognized it, especially, in the calling of Israel to be a people of God’s possession and a blessing to the nations. Hannah, the grateful mother of Samuel, realizes that the birth of her son, Israel’s future kingmaker, represents a turning point in the great drama of redemption. For that reason she lauds the God who lifts up the lowly and turns the table on the tyrants. Her song serves as the template for Mary, mother of Jesus. 

Hannah’s “My heart exults in the Lord” is a perfect set up to Mary’s “My soul magnifies the Lord” (compare Luke 1:46 with 1 Samuel 2:1). Mary’s “he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts. He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty” (Luke 1:51–53) crisply summarizes themes announced by Hannah. The arrogant will not carry the day. The feeble will defeat the mighty. The rich and the poor, and the fruitful and the barren, will exchange roles. All this the Lord will do, says Hannah, when he gives “strength to his king, and exalt[s] the power of his anointed” (1 Samuel 2:10). This very thing the Lord has now begun through his son, Jesus the Messiah-King. 

Acts. It is thrilling to see Peter and the band of 120 or so followers of Jesus (and witnesses to his resurrection) faithfully doing as they had been told: waiting in Jerusalem for power from on high. Even as they wait they are conscious that they participate in the great story of God’s restoring, through a renewed Israel, all that had been lost in the Garden. To that end they ask God to bring the number of the inner circle of disciples back up to twelve. 

They faithfully wait—which is what we find ourselves doing a lot. But we do so, faithfully and prayerfully, for we know that the idols will fall, the Caesars will ultimately yield the field, the barren will bring forth children, and the weak will be made strong. 

Be blessed this day, 

Reggie Kidd+

Image: "العملة المذكورة بالانجيل من زمن سيدنا المسيح ع The Biblical Tribute Penny: Tiberius AR Denarius 16-34 AD; Obverse" by Icarus Kuwait is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0