Change or Die - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Wednesday • 7/14/2021
Wednesday of the Seventh Week After Pentecost (Proper 10)

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 38; 1 Samuel 20:1–23; Acts 12:18–25; Mark 2:13-22

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)

---

“Change or die,” wrote Alan Deutschman in 2007. Since then, so many things have forced that choice on all of us: recession, racial strife, bruising political seasons, global pandemic. We’ve all faced one situation after another where we’ve wished: “Just show me the manual for how to deal with this!” But we discover that there is no manual, no script. Just the need to adapt or die. 

So it’s been all the more important to become more deeply rooted in the biblical story—the one reality that gives perspective to everything else.

Mark: elasticity of spirit. There is one grounding truth that holds the whole Bible together, despite its range of genres, time periods, and angles of vision: God is wooing and winning a wayward world back to himself. One of the Bible’s most powerful metaphors for this dynamic is that of God as Groom and Israel/Church as Bride. Among the many staggering claims Jesus makes for himself, none stands out more than this one: “The wedding guests cannot fast while the bridegroom is with them, can they? As long as they have the bridegroom with them, they cannot fast. The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast on that day” (Mark 2:19–20). 

The reason that Jesus can calm storms, heal the sick, and forgive sins is that he is himself God-the-Groom come for his Bride, Israel reconstituted in the Church. Hosea’s taking to himself as wife the wanton woman Gomer was kind of like a movie trailer  for this bigger story, this larger reality: the bridegroom is here!

After eons of ups and downs on the way to this reality—of prophecies and predictions, of feeble embodiments and failed heroes and heroines—it takes a certain elasticity of spirit to accept it. Elasticity to realize you’ve been bereft of that kind of love. It’s the kind of elasticity that  seemingly only people like rejected tax collectors and lost sinners are characterized by—people who know they have a deficit in the love column. Levi (Matthew) and his friends are ready to hear the call. 

The “righteous,” however, are stuck. Like old wineskins, they don’t have the elasticity to adapt to the new wedding wine God is pouring out. Like cloth that’s too old, too set in its way, and too fragile even to receive a patch, they find themselves unprepared to be incorporated into God’s people who are being newly configured around the Messiah-Groom. 

Acts’ reality check: No, you’re not Numero Uno. Jesus’s message to Herod Agrippa (ruled A.D. 37 to 44), grandson of Herod the Great: “Dude, you really aren’t a god!” 

Maybe the hardest adaptation for many of us to the coming of God’s Messiah is, well, taking ourselves off the throne of our lives and of the little fake kingdoms we’ve built for ourselves. Agrippa’s death by rot from within is a cautionary tale. Which tale is countered by the retelling of Peter’s release from jail with his almost comical reunion with Rhoda, et al. (in yesterday’s reading), and by the report of the continuation of the partnership between Paul and Barnabas in ministering among the Gentiles (in today’s reading). 

1 Samuel: covenant love. There is profound joy in knowing Jesus as God’s Groom for us, as he binds himself to us by the blood of his covenant: “This is my blood of the new covenant which is shed for you and for many” (blending Matthew 26:28; Mark 14:24; Luke 22:29). Maybe one of the greatest joys within that joy is experiencing relationships shaped by covenant love, like that between Jonathan and David. 

Be blessed this day, 

Reggie Kidd+

The Smoke Goes Upwards - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Tuesday • 7/13/2021
Tuesday of the Seventh Week After Pentecost (Proper 10)

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 26; Psalm 28; 1 Samuel 19:1–18; Acts 12:1–17; Mark 2:1–12

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)

---

Bono, lead singer of the band U2, describes music this way: “Music is Worship; whether it’s worship of women or their designer, the world or its destroyer, . . . whether the prayers are on fire with a dumb rage or dove-like desire . . . the smoke goes upwards . . . to God or something you replace God with . . . usually yourself.”* 

The remarkable thing about David’s musical gift is that it has the power to pull him out of what could be a vortex of despair and doubt, and to take it all “upwards,” as Bono might say.

In our reading of 1 Samuel, we’ve come to a critical juncture. David was called in from the sheep fields to find out he’s the future shepherd of God’s people (1 Samuel 16). He has dispatched Goliath, a giant of an enemy of God’s people (1 Samuel 17), and he has been taken into King Saul’s house as though he were a son. There he has found a lifelong friend and soul mate in the king’s son Jonathan (1 Samuel 18). 

And yet, David’s situation is confusing. David has discovered that his songs have the dual power to bring comfort and calm to Saul’s troubled soul (1 Samuel 16:23), and at the same time to launch Saul into a murderous rage (1 Samuel 18:10–11; 19:9–10). David’s been given military command—and yet his every victory is resented (1 Samuel 18:5–9). He’s been made son-in-law to the king—and yet with malicious intent on Saul’s part (1 Samuel 18:20–21,27–29). Finally, in today’s passage, David finds out that the king is plotting to have him assassinated.  He realizes he must flee. So many things seem to be going so wrong. 

It is a wonderful thing that today’s passage in 1 Samuel is paired in the Hebrew Scriptures with a psalm that David wrote on this occasion. The superscription to Psalm 59 reads, in part: “Of David … when Saul ordered his house to be watched in order to kill him.” 

The gift of David’s song-writing is that he is able to crystallize all that’s going on in his heart, and lift it up to the Lord—as though he were sending it up like sweet-smelling incense. In the very process of crafting a song, he also extrapolates from his personal story to Yahweh’s larger purpose to set right a world that has been off-kilter since the Garden. He prays for his own deliverance, and for the whole earth that lies in the grip of the power of evil. Through it all, he sings with joyful and even exuberant hope. 

Just a few highlights: 

“Deliver me … Rouse yourself, come to my help…” — Psalm 59:1,4b. David realizes that all his cunning and craft are not enough to secure his safety. He needs Yahweh to protect him. We can all relate to that! 

“…consume them in wrath, consume them until they are no more” —Psalm 59:13. David calls out his enemies’ pride (Psalm 59:12b), and he calls down punishment on their heads. What is remarkable — admirable, even — is the freedom David feels to express raw emotions to God. It may very well be that such honesty is the reason the Lord can provide David with the grace—the spiritual breathing space—to adopt, in the end, a different posture. For what we will see as 1 Samuel’s narrative progresses, is that when David has the opportunity to kill Saul, he demurs (see 1 Samuel 24 and 26). And when Saul is eventually slain in battle by the Philistines, David will lament his death: “How the mighty have fallen” (2 Samuel 1:25). The lesson of Psalm 59 is that the path to gospel-empathy for those who wish you evil is first to acknowledge before the Lord your feelings about them! The Lord, it seems, can accept anything except pretend piety and fake feelings. 

“But you, O Lord, laugh at them … My merciful God comes to meet me” — Psalm 59:8a,10 BCP). Despite the fact that he is the king’s own son-in-law and champion of the people, David has to be smuggled out a window in the middle of the night to escape Saul’s men (1 Samuel 19:11–17). His song records two facts that anchor his soul in that moment. First, David knows that above the chaos of his life, God reigns in tranquility, and can even have a sense of humor about it. Second, David knows that in the darkest of nights and the most uncertain of situations, he is not alone. He knows that what awaits him is not an unknown and frightening future, but God’s merciful and gracious presence.  

“Then it will be known to the ends of the earth that God rules over Jacob” — Psalm 59:13b. As David sings and prays his way through his own plight, he has an eye to the nations. David is mindful that God’s design is that Israel be a colony to reclaim the world since the Fall. What pains David is that Saul and his operatives are acting like pagan enemies of God — thus, David compares them twice in this psalm to howling and prowling “dogs” (Psalm 59:6,14). Ultimately, what Yahweh calls Israel to do is to promote God’s rule to “the ends of the earth.” For David, “the smoke goes upwards” for the sake of God’s mission in the world. May our prayers reflect this concern as well.

Be blessed this day, 

Reggie Kidd+

Image: Adapted from "VFS Film Production: 'Milligan’s Stew'" by vancouverfilmschool is licensed under CC BY 2.0

*Bono, Introduction to Selections from the Book of Psalms (New York: Grove Press, 1999), x,xi.

Mercy Bestows Life - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Monday • 7/12/2021
Monday of the Seventh Week After Pentecost (Proper 10) 

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 25; 1 Samuel 18:5–16; 27b–30; Acts 11:19–30; Mark 1:29–45

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)

---

1 Samuel: Saul’s envy. One of the deadliest of the deadly sins is envy. Envy believes somebody else’s wellbeing comes at the cost of one’s own. Envy says, “Your prosperity impoverishes me.” King Saul has a bad case of it. David’s military successes make Saul’s seem like failures: “Saul has killed his (insert: mere) thousands, and David his ten thousands” (1 Samuel 18:7b). David’s music had once soothed Saul’s soul; now it puts him in a murderous mood (1 Samuel 18:10–11). The more people love David, the more Saul hates him (1 Samuel 18:16). 

“So Saul eyed David from that day on” (1 Samuel 10:9). People often refer to “green eyed envy.” A friend of mine calls it “the stink eye.” Saul’s “stink eye” betrays the stench of death from within. The sad truth is this: “Saul was afraid of David, because the Lord was with him but had departed from Saul” (1 Samuel 18:12). The sadder truth is that Saul has decided to be his own man, rather than the Lord’s. Trapped within the prison of self, he’s lost all perception of the world as it is. Gone is his sense of the greatness of the office that had been entrusted to him. Envy has made him dead to his true place in the world. Envy has dulled him to God’s design to bring wholeness and wellbeing back into the world through Israel. 

Lord, deliver me from this vile toxicity. May I never imbibe its poison. Bless all those around me whose success I can admire and learn from and contribute to and cheer and celebrate.

Luke: mercy walks the earth. In Dante’s Purgatorio, the Angel of Caritas counters the sin of Envy with the Beatitude: “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy” (Cantos XIII–XV.84; Matthew 5:7). When my vision is not consumed by how your wellbeing could harm me, but rather when I see how your welfare can benefit all of us, I do all that I can to prosper you. 

Jesus Christ is the embodiment of such mercy. No sooner does he enter Simon’s house as a guest than he’s asked to heal Simon’s mother-in-law. He responds with healing mercy. Looking for 0-dark-thirty time alone with his Heavenly Father, Jesus is put upon by the demands of everyone who wants to see him. His response is the opposite of what mine would have been. Instead, mercy compels him to expand the ministry so there will be even more demands on him: “Let us go on to the neighboring towns, so that I may proclaim the message there also; for that is what I came out to do” (Mark 1:38). 

Acts: mercy characterizes Jesus’s followers. And mercy is what characterizes the people whose lives Jesus impacts. Wherever they go, disciples who have fled Jerusalem (due to the persecution that followed Stephen’s stoning) tell fellow Jews about Jesus (Acts 11:19). In one city, Damascus of Syria, they cross the ethnic barrier and share the good news with Greeks. Grace happens: “The hand of the Lord was with them, and a great number became believers and turned to the Lord” (Acts 11:21). 

Word gets to Jerusalem of the new non-Jewish believers. Instead of responding out of fear and perhaps even envy that Gentiles were receiving the gift of new life in Christ, the Jerusalem church sends Barnabas, a Levite from Cyprus, to minister to the Gentiles. The actual name of Barnabas  is “Joseph,” but Acts 4:36 tells us the apostles have dubbed him “Barnabas,” which means “Son of Encouragement.” And encouragement is what he bestows wherever he goes. A man of some wealth, he had sold a piece of property and put the proceeds at the apostles’ disposal, so they could take care of the thousands of new converts (Acts 4:37). That’s mercy! He had been an advocate for the newly converted Saul (the future apostle Paul) when Saul/Paul approached understandably suspicious believers in Jerusalem (Acts 9:26–27). That’s mercy!

Now, Barnabas inspects the doings in Antioch, where the good news of Jesus has jumped the wrong and artificial fireline Jewish Christ-followers had established between themselves and potential Gentile converts (this, despite the Great Commission to “go and make disciples of all nations”). Barnabas sees the grace of God at work in Antioch (Acts 11:23), and heads for Tarsus to seek out Saul (the future apostle to the Gentiles) to help Barnabas minister to the believers in Antioch. Under their ministry, followers of Christ begin to have a distinct identity as “Christians” — “Christ-ones.” Mercy has done this!

Finally, a word of prophecy alerts the Antioch church to a coming famine that will affect everybody (Acts 11:27–28). Then mercy upon mercy, rather than just making provision for themselves, rather than resentfully writing off Jewish Christians who had given every indication that they had intended to keep the riches of the knowledge of Christ to themselves, the Antiochene church raises funds to provide relief for their Jerusalem brothers and sisters. In a pointed way, this is mercy in action. 

Envy kills from within. Mercy bestows life all around.

Be blessed this day, living in the Mercy of God,

Reggie Kidd+

Image: Statue ofSaint Barnabas; church in the Mafra National Palace; Mafra, Portugal;Georges Jansoone,CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Healing Broken Bodies and Oppressed Spirits - Daily Devotions with the Dean

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

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 16; Psalm 17; 1 Samuel 17:17–30; Acts 10:34–48; Mark 1:1–13

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)

---

 A single line from one of today’s psalms prompts prayers of thanksgiving based on today’s New Testament readings: “My lines have fallen in pleasant places” (Psalm 16:6). 

Because of all that Christ is, and because of all that our Heavenly Father has accomplished through him, and because of the fullness of life we enjoy in Christ by the Holy Spirit, there is SO.MUCH.TO.BE.GRATEFUL.FOR:

Thank you, Lord, that you did not leave your people Israel in permanent exile, but you raised up a voice in the wilderness to prepare for the coming of the Lord of rescue (Mark 1:1–4).

Thank you, Lord Jesus, for identifying with us sinners in the waters of baptism, so that you could wash our sins away (Mark 1:9; John 1:29–34). 

Thank you, Father, for the love you have had from eternity for your Son, for the love you declared for your Son at his baptism, for the love with which you brought him back from the dead, and for the love that you have for sons and daughters who are baptized in him (Mark 1:11; Acts 10:44–48). 

Thank you, Father, that in the Holy Spirit, you gave your Son every resource he needed to accomplish his mission on this earth: to resist Satan in the wilderness, and to go about doing good and healing broken bodies and oppressed spirits (Mark 1:10–13; Acts 10:38). Thank you, Father, for baptizing us with that same Spirit, manifesting your grace in so many wonderful graces within and through us (Acts 10:46; Romans 12:3–8; 1 Corinthians 12:4–11; 1 Peter 4:10–11). 

Thank you, Lord, that there is no place on the earth where, nor any people on this planet among whom, you do not accept those who “fear God and do justice” (Acts 10:35). Thank you for the confidence this truth gives us to go and tell of Jesus the Lord of all and the Judge of the living and the dead…who has come to bring peace! (Acts 10:36,42)

Thank you, Lord, for raising up reliable witnesses of your resurrection and for providing foundational proclaimers of your gospel, so we can know that when we speak of Jesus’s dying for sinners and rising to make saints, we speak of true truths, things that are not fabulous fables, mere myths, and saccharine stories (Acts 10:41–42; 2 Peter 1:16; John 18:35; 21:24–25; 1 John 1:1–4). 

Thank you, Lord, that my lines have fallen in pleasant places, and that, indeed, “I have a goodly heritage” (Psalm 16:6).

Be blessed this day, 

Reggie Kidd+ 

Image: Christ Healing the Sick, Washington Allston , Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

A Heart Checkup- Daily Devotions with the Dean

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

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 119:1–24; 1 Samuel 16:1–13; Acts 10:1–16; Luke 24:13–35

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)

---

Who I essentially am—what at bottom my basic life assumptions and drives and loves are—the Bible’s shorthand for all that is “heart.” The Bible’s message to me, further, is that my “heart” is set in one direction or another: it is set on God, or it is not. 

In the “not” column can stand many things: myself, my “people,” my country, a cause, money, nothing in particular (which I can cover by binging or by busy-ness)—just not God. 

In the “on God” column stand a host of graces, summed up in one: love … love of God and love of neighbor. 

Today’s readings provide a wonderful opportunity for a “heart” checkup.

1 Samuel. What God is looking for in Saul’s replacement as king over his people is someone who is notable not for their physical impressiveness (like Saul) or their claim of birth (like Jesse’s first born, Eliab). “[T]he Lord does not see as mortals see; they look on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart” (1 Samuel 16:7). 

In David, Yahweh sees someone who has learned, in the first place, the humility to be overlooked for kingship. More fundamentally, Yahweh sees in David someone who has learned, “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want” (Psalm 23)—that’s the kind of person with the heart for shepherding His people. Such a shepherd will know how to nourish and protect God’s flock, for he himself has experienced Yahweh’s nourishing and protecting grace. Despite the glaring flaws (of which we will read shortly), David’s whole being is defined by his love for and dependence upon Yahweh—and Yahweh can work with that (1 Samuel 13:14; 16:7). 

“[F]rom that day forward…” — 1 Samuel 16:13c. In contrast to the sporadic, even spasmodic, experience of Saul, David’s experience of the Spirit of God is permanent and abiding (see Psalm 51:11–12). It’s almost as though Saul’s experience of God’s Spirit had been a series of “possessions” — it certainly was not an indwelling. Saul’s heart simply had no room for the living God. 

Sidebar: The difference between “Spirit-possession” and “Spirit-indwelling” is something to keep in mind when miracle workers arise. Do their lives testify to the Spirit’s “indwelling” presence and remolding work. Or is their experience more like a “possession” that leaves the person unaffected? Does a person with flashy signs also evidence the deeper fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5)? Or are the signs accompanied, instead, by the fruit of the world, the flesh, and the devil (lawlessness, deceit, lust, greed, pride, arrogance, envy, bitterness—see Galatians 5:19–20; 1 John 2:15–16)? Just asking.  

In Acts, we are treated to a study in the way God the Father has been preparing for the pouring out of his Spirit upon “all flesh.” Over the course of his life, the Roman centurion Cornelius’s heart has become aligned with that of the God of the Bible. Presumably from a pagan background, Cornelius has been attracted to Israel’s God. “He was a devout man who feared God with all his household; he gave alms generously to the people and prayed constantly to God” (Acts 10:2). That heart-orientation and those practices put him in a position to respond well when God’s angel visits him: “Your prayers and your alms have ascended as a memorial before God. Now send…” (Acts 10:4b–5a). 

Luke tells us about two disciples who confess, “Were not our hearts burning within us?” Theirs had been broken hearts at the beginning of today’s passage. But these were hearts that had been able honestly to acknowledge their disappointment and dismay at the dashing of their hopes and dreams for Israel’s redemption when Jesus was executed. 

Their hearts, in other words, had already been set in the right direction. What was needed, and what was supplied, was for Jesus to meet them with healing power for their receptive yet broken hearts. He tells them, at length (it probably took a couple of hours to walk the 7 miles from Jerusalem to Emmaus), the whole biblical backstory to that weekend’s events: “‘Was it not necessary that the Messiah should suffer these things and then enter into his glory?’ Then beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them the things about himself in all the Scriptures” (Luke 24:26–27). 

What grace! Even so, more grace than the mere telling of the story is required—and more grace is given! At the table, Jesus repeats the fourfold acts of the Eucharist he had shared with his disciples that last night—“he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them” (Luke 24:30; see Luke 22:19). It’s this combination of Word and Table that breaks through the gloom … and begins the restoration of hope and the rebuilding of despairing hearts.   

May your heart and mine be ever set, like David’s, on the love of God. May your heart and mine be shaped, like Cornelius’s, by the disciplines of devotion, of poor-relief, and of prayer. May your heart and mine be ever ready, like Cleopas’s and his companion’s, to be joyfully surprised when Jesus meets us in our deepest grief, with his life-giving Word and his Body and Blood. 

Be blessed this day, 

Reggie Kidd+    

Image: Altar Kneelers, Cathedral Church of St. Luke, Orlando, Florida

Here, There, and Everywhere - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Thursday • 7/8/2021
Thursday of the Sixth Week After Pentecost (Proper 9)

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 18; 1 Samuel 16:14–17:11; Acts 10:17–33; Luke 24:36–53 

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)

---

 This hopelessly romantic teenager spent hour upon hour pining for a love that could satisfy the longing in the Beatles 1966 song from the Revolver album, “Here There and Everywhere.”

To lead a better life, I need my love to be here
Here, making each day of the year
Changing my life with a wave of her hand
Nobody can deny that there’s something there

Knowing that love is to share
Each one believing that love never dies
Watching their eyes
And hoping I’m always there

I will be there, and everywhere
Here, there and everywhere.

Harry Blamires, Christian thinker and friend of C. S. Lewis, says that youthful desires always carry about them a “sacramental cast.” When we are young, he argues, longings emerge within us that bear within them the promise of ultimate satisfaction and joy — satisfaction and joy that earthly relationships can only partially fulfill. Those desires can only be meaningfully fulfilled in this life if we see them as pointers to what lies beyond them: satisfaction and joy in being loved by and in loving God himself. 

The good news is that there is Someone who can be for each of us: “here, there, and everywhere.” That is the extraordinary truth that Luke brings home to us in the final two vignettes of his gospel. 

“Here…” The resurrected Christ is really “here”: “Look at my hands and my feet; see that it is I myself. Touch me and see; for a ghost (Gk, pneuma) does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have” (Luke 24:39). The Jesus who has returned from the dead is no mere “spirit” (Gk, pneuma), meaning in this context “ghost,” or “disembodied, nonphysical being.” It’s understandable that a fifth century manuscript introduced the term “phantasm” (Gk, phantasma). None of that is what the resurrected Jesus is. The God-Man did not mount the cross and enter his tomb only to emerge as Casper the Friendly Ghost, or as something on the order of the apparitional Obi-Wan Kenobi who guides Luke Skywalker after submitting to Darth Vader’s lightsaber.  

In proof of the physical nature of his resurrection-body, Jesus offers his hands and feet to his disciples’ touch. He asks for something to eat. “So they gave him a piece of broiled fish, and he took it and ate it in front of them” (Luke 24:42–43). The fact that his resurrection body can take in food raises (at least to me) all kinds of questions about his present (and our future) metabolism. However, the New Testament isn’t interested in speaking to a matter like that (one day, we’ll see what it means). What Luke is at pains to present is the fact that the risen Jesus is not a Savior who has rescued us out of our human, embodied existence. Instead, Jesus has risen as what theologian Richard Gaffin calls our “glorified humanity.”* Jesus has risen to redeem us in our embodied humanity. Praise be!!

“…There, and Everywhere.” But while Jesus is not a pneuma in the sense of “ghost,” nonetheless, his presence among is mediated by the Holy Spirit. The last vignette in Luke’s Gospel illustrates what his traveling companion Paul describes in 1 Corinthians as the fact that “the Last Adam (Christ) has become life-giving Spirit” (also Gk, pneuma, but note the necessary capitalization of the word “Spirit,” which most translations miss—1 Corinthians 15:45). Luke portrays Christ ascending to the Father in his full physicality, so he can receive and pour out upon us the Holy Spirit. By that same Spirit, Christ returns to us and takes up residence among and within us. 

No, Christ hasn’t come back from the grave as a “spirit” (in the sense of being a ghost). But in his bodily form he does ascend to the right hand of the Father so that he can return to us in the person of the Holy Spirit. Two incredible things happen with his ascension. First, now one of us is there—in the very throne room of the Lord of the universe! As firstborn from the dead, the risen Lord Jesus represents us—there he intercedes for us, guides us in living and worshiping, proclaims the Father’s name to us and keeps our name before the Father, sings over us, and brings us bread and wine from God’s holy altar (Hebrews 2:12; 7:25; 8:2; 13:10). 

Second, the risen and ascended Jesus sends power from on high to enable us to witness and to see him work miracle after miracle of conversion and transformation. The power he sends is his own presence. The Holy Spirit among us is the Spirit of Christ himself. The amazing thing—the thing that is virtually incomprehensible to us—is that the resurrected Christ can be in two places at once: there at the right hand of the Father, and here residing in each of us and in all of us: “Here, There, and Everywhere.”

Be blessed this day with his presence, “here, there, and everywhere,”

Reggie Kidd+

*Richard B. Gaffin, Jr., “Life-Giving Spirit,” Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society, 1998, p. 582.

"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)

---

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)

---

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.

---

“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.

---

 “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.

---

 “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