"Meh, OK" - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Tuesday • 7/6/2021
Tuesday of the Sixth Week After Pentecost (Proper 9)

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 5; Psalm 6; 1 Samuel 15:24–35; Acts 9:32–43; Luke 23:56b–24:11

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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It is fitting that we read Luke’s account of Jesus’s resurrection alongside 1 Samuel’s account of the definitive rejection of King Saul and the final dispatching of King Agag, on the one hand, and the account in Acts of the healing of Aeneas and the raising up of Dorcas/Tabitha, on the other.

The Bible’s larger story is one of God’s persistent, insistent, and ultimately irresistible intention to redeem humankind. The heart of the story is the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ (Luke 23 and 24). That unimaginable narrative forces an either/or choice for every one of us: we either accept it with a hearty “I’m all in,” or we reject it, with either a resolute, or a shrugged, “nah.” 

1 Samuel portrays King Saul’s attempt to have it both ways: “I’m kind of in, and I’m kind of not in.” The message of 1 Samuel is that a pretend or equivocal allegiance, a “meh, ok,” is no allegiance: “…you have rejected the word of the Lord, and the Lord has rejected you…” (1 Samuel 15:26).  

“And the Lord was sorry that he had made Saul king over Israel” — 1 Samuel 15:35b. The sad tale of King Saul sends the message to each of us: don’t make the God of the universe regret (and there are a thousand caveats that could be offered here) he ever put you here, the way he regretted putting the kingdom of God in Saul’s hands. 

The hewing of King Agag by God’s prophet is a difficult passage to read. We must understand that it is a ritual execution decreed by Yahweh himself, the God of pure justice and holiness—and the God who ultimately will not let condemnatory death have the last say. In the mystery of his own counsel, Yahweh allows his own “righteous” (see Luke 23:47) Son to undergo a similarly gruesome and horrific execution. Yet Jesus endures his execution not on his own account. He does so on behalf of others who are as wicked as Agag and as faithless as Saul, uttering “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do,” along the way (Luke 23:34). He carries their iniquities, their rebelliousness, their betrayals, their arrogance into the tomb; and he leaves their offenses in the tomb behind him when he emerges alive again. 

In his Book of Acts, Luke describes the life-giving power that Jesus’s resurrection unleashes. 

In Acts 9, we find the apostle Peter ministering in the territory of classical Philistia. This is the region to which Jesus had taken the disciples right after declaring all foods clean. When Peter and the disciples rebuked the Canaanite woman, Jesus commended her faith and healed her daughter of an unclean demonic spirit (Matthew 15 and Mark 7). 

Aeneas of Lydda rises from his sickbed, his own elegant, if tacit, “I’m all in!” in response to the divinely personal overture given through Peter: “Aeneas, Jesus the Christ heals you. Get up and make your own bed” (Acts 9:34). Many turn to the Lord as a result.

Dorcas/Tabitha of Joppa lies dead. She’s good and dead, her body washed and prepared for interment. Surrounded by artifacts of her beneficences and by the laments of her beneficiaries, it appears that her earthly ministry of mercy is over. But, no. , Peter addresses her dead body: “Tabitha, get up.” Luke tells it dramatically: she opens her eyes, sees Peter, sits up, and accepting Peter’s extended hand she stands. Presented alive to the other widows and saints, she becomes the occasion for the conversion of many in Joppa.

A fitting coda to today’s Acts passage is Luke’s brief note about Peter staying in the home of Joppa’s Simon, “a tanner” … in Jewish eyes, an unclean profession. Peter has come a long way since his sharing in the rebuke of the Canaanite woman. Next stop, the home of Cornelius, the Roman centurion!

Be blessed this day,

Reggie Kidd+

Image: Emoji One, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Recipes: Instructions or Suggestions? - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Monday • 7/5/2021
Monday of the Sixth Week After Pentecost (Proper 9) 

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 1; Psalm 2; Psalm 3; 1 Samuel 15:1–3,7–23; Acts 9:19b–31; Luke 23:44–56a

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 my wife and many others who cook, recipes are invitations to creativity. For them, the joy of cooking lies in substituting ingredients and changing measurements at will, seemingly whimsically at times. The results can be spectacular, resulting in meals that taste better than if directions had been meticulously followed. 

By contrast, I once had a job assembling lawnmowers. The instructions were clear: “Turn this screw two and a half times to secure the motor to the frame. If you turn the screw only two times, the motor will eventually come loose from the frame, and the customer will not be happy. If you turn the screw three times, you will strip the threads and we’ll have to throw the frame away.”

Sometimes it’s OK to take instructions as suggestions. Sometimes it’s not. 

Wisdom knows when to improvise, and when to do what you’re told. In the Bible, it’s a matter of the heart, a matter of discernment. Somebody once noted, “Saul had no heart for God and lost the kingdom. David had a whole heart for God and saw the kingdom united. Solomon had half a heart for God, and we see the kingdom divided after his death.” The narratives of Samuel and Kings bear out these observations. 

1 Samuel. Because David had a heart for God, his improvisations on God’s commands were acceptable, as when (as we will read next week), he and his men ate the “bread of the Presence” (1 Samuel 21:1–15). Because Saul’s heart is far from God, however, his improvisations on God’s instructions backfire. Yahweh puts the Amalekites, inveterate enemies of Israel, completely under the ban. For that reason, Saul is commissioned to impose God’s sentence of judgment. Saul improvises: he spares Agag the Amalekites’ king, and he allows his soldiers to spare “the best of the sheep and of the cattle and of the fatlings, and the lambs, and all that was valuable” (1 Samuel 15:9). 

After the fact, Saul makes a show of piety. He builds an altar purportedly for sacrifice. In reality, however, it is a monument to his own ego. The altar is, as the New International Version nicely renders, “in his own honor” (1 Samuel 15:10). Taken alive, Agag is potentially worthwhile to Saul as a walking trophy, a constant reminder of his own military prowess. And the booty (“… all that was valuable”) that the soldiers were allowed to “swoop down on” (1 Samuel 15:19) and take as plunder—well, it was just that, plunder, not sacrifice. The “sacrifice” is just theatre. 

No, King Saul’s mandate from God is like my instructions to turn the screw exactly two and a half times. His situation is not like my wife’s, where the instructions on the page invite her to see potential beyond the words on the page. What Yahweh has been inviting from Saul throughout his life is an aligning of Saul’s heart with his. Yahweh’s “delight” would have lain in finding Saul delighting in Him. Instead, Saul proves his unerring instinct is for self. And his show of religiosity is a cover for rebellion and arrogance (1 Samuel 15:23). He has rejected Yahweh’s overture, and Yahweh has reluctantly (oh the mystery!) said, “OK, Saul, have it your way. You want to be a law unto yourself, you are free to go.” Lord, have mercy, on me a sinner!

Acts. The sad demise of King Saul sets in striking relief the redemption of his namesake and fellow Benjamite (Philippians 3:5), Saul of Tarsus. 

Claimed by Christ and newly baptized, Saul of Tarsus finds Scripture’s story coming alive with Jesus-as-Son-of-God-and-Messiah as its centerpiece. He begins to give powerful voice to that reality in Damascus, among the believers whom he had been sent to persecute: “For several days he was with the disciples in Damascus, and immediately he began to proclaim Jesus in the synagogues, saying, ‘He is the Son of God.’ All who heard him were amazed … Saul became increasingly more powerful and confounded the Jews who lived in Damascus by proving that Jesus was the Messiah” (Acts 9:19b–21a,22). 

The result of Christ’s work in Saul of Tarsus’s heart is that we begin to see the transformation of a meticulous instruction-follower who thought he had been given a mandate like that of the earlier Saul: kill the infidels! Now, humbled and made new by the cross and resurrection of Christ, he reads the biblical story more deeply. Now, he adjusts and adapts to whatever situation the Lord puts before him in order to carry out his new mission: to tell the good news, to the Jew first and also to the Greek (Romans 1:16). 

Case in point is this Saul’s willingness to undergo the first of many humbling experiences for the sake of the gospel: he lets himself be lowered from the city wall of Damascus in a basket, he permits himself to be scrutinized by (understandably) skeptical Christ-followers in Jerusalem, and he submits to being secreted out of Jerusalem to his hometown Tarsus.

This is not the most direct route to the position of prominence the Book of Acts will assign to him. Then again, this heart is being molded after the likeness of the Christ who conquered through defeat, and who ennobled others by suffering ignobility himself. As a result, this Saul, unlike the previous Saul, will come to embody the deeper reality Scripture had always sought beyond “burnt offerings and sacrifices”: the presenting of one’s whole being as a sacrifice, “living, holy, and acceptable to God” (Romans 12:2). 

With that same power at work in you, may you be blessed this day, 

Reggie Kidd+

Image: "Cookbooks [235/366]" by timsackton is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0

The Local Language: Like the Theme from Rawhide - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Friday • 7/2/2021

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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“A Campaign Only Love Can Win”

“Music is a universal phenomenon but not a universal language,” maintains ethnomusicologist Robin Harris. So true. Jake and Elwood Blues (The Blues Brothers, 1980)  might not have made it out of Bob’s Country Bunker alive if they had not figured out the local language was “Theme from Rawhide,” not “Gimme Some Lovin’.” 

Sometimes it’s not that easy. Once, some friends and I never got past a group’s stony silence with our songs. Another friend had asked us to come and lead worship. He thought our stuff was cool and he thought his group would think so too. Wrong! Unfortunately, unlike the Blues Brothers, we didn’t have a wide enough repertoire to adjust to the situation. It was a night to remember.  

What does it take to learn somebody’s “heart language” of music? It takes learning their heart. It takes the singular language of love that Christ’s followers learn from the one they follow.   

Singing Is Not the Only Worship

The Christian faith was born in the Middle East — born unwelcomed, born in controversy. It established itself largely through its irrepressible love. “Look … how they love one another!” complained unbelievers about Christ’s followers, according to the North African theologian Tertullian around A.D. 197/198. That love, observed modern historian E. R. Dodds, was “a major cause, perhaps the strongest single cause, of the spread of Christianity.” 

Nearly 2,000 years later, nothing’s changed. 

A friend of mine — call her Margie — ministers frequently in Tertullian’s part of the world. Hers is not a ministry of music, but she has a lot to teach those of us who think worship is just about the music. On a recent trip she had been asked to bring a teaching for women in ministry:

I really struggled with what I should share with the women.  I had prepared two messages, but neither seemed appropriate.  During my restless night before my scheduled time to speak it seemed that Jesus clearly spoke to me saying, ”Wash their feet.” But where would I find the basins and towels?  I shared my desire with a servant leader and within a few hours everything appeared in our “upper room.”

I modeled the process with a dear sister who serves in a highly restrictive country. In humbleness I knelt before her and while washing her feet I quoted verses of encouragement and prayed for her as I finished. We traded places. The Spirit’s presence was very evident as we clung to one another in love and tears. Other ladies came and filled the chairs and washed each other’s feet. There were many tears, but much joy.  

One missionary wanted to wash others’ feet but did not allow someone to wash hers. That night when she shared with her husband, he knelt down and washed her feet. Another wanted to have her feet washed for her team member who was not at the conference. When she returned to her country of service, she washed her feet. One of the gifts we had taken for the ladies were bedroom slippers — not knowing that we would be washing their feet. 

When the ladies shared their experience with their husbands the vision caught and spread. In fact, when the elders from that country visited the church leaders in yet another restrictive country — one where there is military conflict and where the gospel is just struggling to regain a foothold — they knelt and washed their brothers’ feet. Once again, the humbling, healing service was blessed. 

It was as though the Lord were anointing an army of footwashers, to wage a campaign only love can win. 

The way of love is the way of immersion. It’s the way of observation. It’s the way of listening. It’s a way that Margie had learned over time. If she had been a musician, she wouldn’t have needed beer bottles flying through chicken wire à la The Blues Brothers to get her attention. Nor would she have encountered stony silence from people who found her music alien. 

She loved — she simply loved. Then when she finally made her offering, its recipients made it their own and found a way to multiply it. 

Be blessed this day, 

Reggie Kidd+

Image: Cover art, Blues Brothers DVD

Redemption Songs - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Thursday • 7/1/2021

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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 “Redemption Songs: Plainsong Style”

As the credits roll in the movie I Am Legend, Bob Marley sings: 

Won’t you help to sing
These songs of freedom?
‘Cause all I ever have:
Redemption songs,
Redemption songs,
Redemption songs. 

An artful choice. Marley’s reggae music provides the movie’s central character, Robert Neville (played by Will Smith) a slender line of hope. He’s reluctant to believe that in his post-apocalyptic world there’s a God with a plan, reluctant to believe even that any other non-zombie humans exist. Marley’s voice from a healthier world helps him fend off despair.

Many of us know what it is to feel cut off — to have no sense that there’s a master plan. The driver from hell nearly runs you off the road. Cash flow is negative. A relationship unravels. Evil reigns in the world, good is thwarted at every turn. And you go: “Am I left alone?”

Will Smith had Bob Marley’s reggae. I have the book of Psalms — and I have them in the ancient church’s plainsong. 

The Psalms invite me to tell God’s people’s story as my own: Give thanks to the Lord …; make known his deeds among the peoples (Ps 105:1). Warnings made to others become warnings I send to my own unbelieving heart: … they did not wait for his counsel (Ps 106:13). Betrayals of David, then of my Redeemer, and now, to my astonishment, of me — I find I share — I mean really share — by virtue of taking David’s and Jesus’ words as my very own: Even my best friend, whom I trusted, … has turned against me (Ps 41:9). Promises made to others, I take for myself — Taste and see that the Lord is good (Ps 34:8) — as though they were intended for me in the first place. Wisdom aimed at people three millennia ago I sing as though I had thought it up myself: … my feet had nearly slipped … because I envied the proud (Ps 73:2a,3a). 

The power lies not just in the Psalms’ words, though. It lies also in their music. “He who reads the Torah without chant, of him can it be said as it is written, ‘the laws that I gave you were not good,’” says the Mishnah’s Rabbi Johanan. How much more true of the psalms. Ancient Israel chanted the psalms. The ancient church chanted them as well. “A soul rightly ordered by chanting the sacred words forgets its own afflictions and contemplates with joy the things of Christ alone,” maintained Athanasius of Alexandria in the 4th century.

Fact is, when truth becomes song, you know it at a deeper level. 

This past Advent, I began chanting psalms in my daily devotions. I’m doing so using the eight ancient plainsong chant tones that have their origins in the Gregorian musical revolution of the middle of the 1st millennium, as recovered and restored in the late 19th century. James Litton has adapted them for church and individual singing in his handsome volume, The Plainsong Psalter (Church Publishing Inc., 1988; ISBN: 978-0809691627 — hardback, quarto-sized, $40). 

A couple of friends on the other side of the country have bonded with me in an arrangement of spirit. We’re simply following the course laid out in the Daily Office in the Book of Common Prayer (which serves as the text base for The Plainsong Psalter). It takes seven weeks to chant through the psalms, a pace of about three psalms per day. It’s a tempo that works for me.

The great thing about chant is that you don’t have to force the text into an artificial meter. Chanting allows the text to take its own meter and rhythm. In a given line, singers stay on a chanting tone all the way up to the last note (or two or three) of a phrase. 

The plainsong music is lovely. Tone 1 is the basis for the tune most of us know as “When I Survey the Wondrous Cross.” And if you’ve admired Allegri’s Miserere, you’ll recognize Tone 2 to be the cantor’s melody.  

In the early hours of the morning I enjoy the fellowship across 1500 years or so with folks who have shared these psalms in similar fashion. I love the bold aspiration of the original Gregorians: to create a music that all believers could sing and that was trying to be indigenously Christian, but that was in positive dialogue with the best music theory of its day.

In this world that is beyond crazy I enjoy having my “soul rightly ordered” as I sing redemption songs, plainsong-style.

Be blessed this day, 

Reggie Kidd+

Image: "I Am Legend" by Buou is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

"The 'Clown' Was Me" - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Wednesday • 6/30/2021

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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 “The ‘Clown’ Was Me”

Just as I was ordering my Big Mac, a woman came into McDonald’s yanking on the arm of a young child. Ugliness leaped from this slovenly woman. Dragging on a cigarette butt, she yelled at her kid: “Shut up and tell me what you want to eat, or I’m going to kick you from here to Kingdom come!” 

But then I noticed this distinctive shape to her face ...

Suddenly, I realized this face was identical to that of one of the prostitutes French artist Georges Rouault had once painted. This woman could have served as his model. 

Though he lived from 1871 to 1958, Rouault’s most notable working years spanned WWI and WWII. Many artists of his day heard in the turmoil of their times the death-knell of Christendom and of the Christian faith. For Rouault, though, the times were proof of our need for Christ. 

His art became the means of bringing together God’s story and our pain. 

As a teen, Rouault had apprenticed as a stained glass artisan. He learned to tell a story through simplicity of line and color. In his early adult years he studied the realistic technique of Rembrandt, in quest of that master’s psychological depth. Rouault’s early work, not surprisingly, reveals an artist who has not yet found his voice. 

Then, around 1903 when Rouault was in his early 30’s, he had a happenstance encounter with an off-duty clown. Everything changed. It is the moment, as he puts it, “that marked the beginnings of poetry in my life.” 

Rouault comes upon this old clown “mending his glittering and colorful costume.” He sees the jarring contrast of “brilliant, scintillating things, made to amuse us,” on the one hand, and the infinite sadness in the man’s unguarded face, on the other. 

I clearly saw that the “Clown” was me, it was us. ... This rich and spangled costume is given to us by life, we are all clowns more or less, we all wear a “spangled costume,” but if we are caught unawares, as I surprised the old clown, oh! Then who would dare to say that he is not moved to the bottom of his being by immeasurable pity.

Rouault begins to paint pictures that tell us the truth about ourselves: sorrowful clowns (“Who does not paint himself a face?”), imperious kings (“We think we are kings...”), self-absorbed bourgeoisie (“The well-bred lady thinks she has a reserved seat in heaven.”) 

He drops his realistic technique for the look of the stained glass of his youth: thick, simple lines. Vivid colors. Simple but penetrating truths about ourselves. 

Stained glass is above all the church’s art. Here’s where Rouault’s art becomes poetry. He uses his stained glass effect because, in pity, he would point us to Jesus, to him who had become “like us in all things, save sin” so he could redeem and heal us. In Rouault’s hands, one portrait of Christ looks as ugly as the sinners with whom he identifies, while another portrait is iconically transcendent, a promise of peace and resurrection.  

Standing at that McDonalds counter, I realized that despite all that made us different, this woman and I were the same. Same ugliness. Same dignity and beauty for which we were created, but from which we have fallen so hopelessly and seemingly irrevocably. 

Then came the epiphany, unbidden. In a flash, I recalled Rouault’s famous Head of Christ. I think it was the shape of the jaw. In my imagination, the woman’s face morphed, first, to that of Rouault’s sad, angry prostitute, then second, to his sadder, compassionate Christ. 

Art of any sort — from painting to music to worship design — has this extraordinary power: it can bring a whispered promise or a shouted call from another realm. The incarnation itself brings, after all, God’s permanent residence in our reality.  

Rouault’s portrait of the prostitute said: “Doesn’t she look a lot like you and me?” His portrait of Christ said: “Didn’t he come for the likes of her and you and me?” 

I should have talked to this “Fallen Eve” (a term Rouault sometimes used). But the words wouldn’t come. All I knew to do in that moment was pray: “Lord, have mercy. On her. On me. On this sad world you love. In your own time and in your own way, show yourself to this dear child of yours, and save her. And Lord, forgive my blindness to what, or rather Who, makes us one.” I pray for her still. 

Be blessed this day,

Reggie Kidd+

Image: "IMG_1833 Georges Rouault. 1871-1958. Paris. La Sainte Face. The Holy face. Gent." by jean louis mazieres is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

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