From Scrolls to Scrolling - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Wednesday • 7/21/2021

It’s summer, and it’s the first week of the last year of my sixth decade. Another break from the Daily Office seems to be in order. I’m offering, this week, yet more worship themes I’ve developed with my friends at Worship Leader Magazine. We’ll resume our reflections on the Daily Office Monday, July 26.

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Wisdom for Worship in a Wiki-world 

Endless invention, endless experiment,
Brings knowledge of motion, but not of stillness;
Knowledge of speech, but not of silence;
Knowledge of words, and ignorance of the Word. …
Where is the Life we have lost in living?
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?

T. S. Eliot, Choruses from “The Rock,” I

When the present information revolution was still in the womb, T. S. Eliot worried about losing wisdom in the quest for knowledge, and abandoning knowledge out of lust for information. Imagine how he’d felt if he’d had Wikipedia. Imagine if he could have seen the days when his own poems could be hypertexted out of rather than be patiently labored through. Imagine if he had to drive on roads with people who were literally risking Life because they were busy texting, “lost in their living”? 

The ancient church offers wisdom for a time like ours. 

From Scrolls to Scrolling

“In the beginning was the scroll,” quips University of Pennsylvania Professor Robert A. Kraft, a pioneer in the digitizing and coding of ancient texts. Prior to Christianity, scrolls were the tenured medium for literature, both among pagans and Jews. Scrolls were revered, but they were cumbersome. Scrolls unrolled (literally!) texts at their own pace, but they virtually forced you to “read through” a text.

An extraordinary technological innovation took place during the first four centuries of the church’s existence. About A.D. 331, the emperor Constantine commissioned the publication of fifty Bibles. In terms of content, his act signaled the consensus that had emerged about what the boundaries of Christian Scripture are. In terms of form, his act put the capstone on Christians’ adoption of the “book” over the “scroll.” In fact, the term “Bible” means literally “book.” “The Book” was compact and portable. “The Book” allowed us to embody the singular story that runs from Genesis to Revelation as an accessible, coherent whole. “The Book” allowed cross-referencing and the comparing of one passage with another. Judging “the Book” to be better suited to teaching and to furthering the mission, we adopted it as a better medium for our message. 

Quite Controversial

The shift from scroll to book was not without risk. When literature is in book- rather than scroll-form, it’s easier to stand over a text rather than come under it. Once you can cross-reference, you can also skip around. If you don’t have to “read through” a text and submit yourself to its agenda, you can also merely access a text and look for support for what you already believe. 

The ancient church could take the risk because of the way they worshiped. In the first place, the great creeds — crisp summaries of the faith — come from this era. And these weren’t just abstract, theoretical documents. They served worship. They were the means by which the worshiping church said, in response to the Word: “Amen. So we believe. So we will live.” The concise Apostles Creed came to mark worship during baptism and the more complete Nicene Creed worship during communion. 

In the second place, it looks like ancient churches aspired to be reading the same parts of the biblical story, together. They have left to us lectionaries (prescribed scriptural readings for public worship), testimonies of the desire to get full coverage of the Bible’s story line over time. The lectionaries themselves came to be tied to a calendar, shaped not around the pagan Roman calendar, but around the sacred events of Jesus’ life (from Advent and Christmas through Holy Week, Pentecost, and Ascension). In worship, “the Book” served the telling of a singular, lucid story: Jesus’ story. 

Baby and Bathwater

C. S. Lewis once advised reading one old book for every new, or at least one old one for every three new ones. My own corollary: one ancient practice for every new. To our google- and wiki-world, with its profound “decentralization of information,” the wisdom of the creeds can speak with perhaps even greater force than they did when they were formulated. Luke Timothy Johnson’s The Creed and Alexander Schmemann’s I Believe have helped me appreciate the oneness of voice with which the church has always sought — and must continue to seek — to speak. In the midst of the nearly anarchic approaches to preaching in the evangelical world — expository, topical, purpose-driven, gospel-centered, whatever — the lectionary for corporate reading and the “daily office” for personal reading deserve a second look. They offer a way of centering our corporate and personal reading around the life and work of the Bible’s point — Jesus. They also put us in fellowship with a vast number of fellow journeyers around the world and across time. 

Be blessed this day, 

Reggie Kidd+

Praying Baptism's Story - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Tuesday • 7/20/2021

It’s summer, and it’s the first week of the last year of my sixth decade. Another break from the Daily Office seems to be in order. I’m offering, this week, yet more worship themes I’ve developed with my friends at Worship Leader Magazine. We’ll resume our reflections on the Daily Office Monday, July 26.

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Praying Baptism’s Story 

We stood around a large, water-filled salad bowl that served as a makeshift baptismal  font. We had gathered to renew our baptismal vows. Each of us responded to the water as we saw fit. One dropped a nail into it: “Thank you, Jesus, for taking away my sins.” Another dipped his hands into the water and touched his forehead, his eyes, his ears, his lips: “Lord, be in my doing, my thinking, my seeing, my hearing, my speaking.”

Several told the story of their baptism: 

“I wore my best dress the day of my baptism because I knew that I would rise from that water a new person.”

“At my baptism, the minister totally messed up my name. It reminded me that God and nobody else gave me my new name.”

One plunged her hands into the water and then touched the hands of each person in the group: “These waters so often divide us. But today, may they make us one. May it be with us, ‘One Lord, one faith, one baptism.’”

Baptism is where our vastly different stories become one story—indeed, where they become God’s story.

Changing Plotlines

The early church understood that baptism marked the place where believers stepped out of one story and into another. That is one of the things their liturgies and their catechisms shout to us across the centuries. I have learned to punctuate worship services (baptismal and otherwise) with elements of the baptismal prayers of the ancient church:

We give you thanks, eternal God,
for you nourish and sustain all living things
by the gift of water.

In the beginning of time,
your Spirit moved over the watery chaos,
calling forth order and life.

The watery rhythms of life bear the kiss of God: from precipitation to condensation to evaporation, from Central Florida’s gorgeous thunderclouds to Iceland’s majestic glaciers, from rivers that flow to tides that wax and wane. Here is a God who is wildly alive. Here is a God to celebrate.

In the time of Noah,
you destroyed evil by the waters of the flood,
giving righteousness a new beginning.

Finish Line

God’s storyline will end with evil vanquished, and with good and right in charge. Some days this very hope is all that gets me out of bed.

You led Israel out of slavery,
through the waters of the sea,
into the freedom of the Promised Land.

We do not have to live in chains of guilt or shame or impotence, but can walk in the open spaces of forgiveness and peace and power and virtue. In addition, to work for the freedom of others is not futile. That is mighty good news!

In the waters of Jordan
Jesus was baptized by John
and anointed with your Spirit.

By the baptism of his own death and resurrection,
Christ set us free from sin and death,
and opened the way to eternal life.

Redemption

God permanently strapped our humanity to himself. Jesus walked in perfect fellowship with his Father. Like “early rain” that promises an abundant growing season, Jesus’ dominion over sickness and death and evil prefigured humanity’s own calling and destiny. He poured out an offering that covers all our disobedience. It is wondrously beyond comprehension. It staggers the imagination. It … redeems the imagination.

We thank you, O God, for the water of baptism.
In it we were buried with Christ in his death.
From it we were raised to share in his resurrection,
Through it we were reborn by the power of the Holy Spirit.

By some divine mystery—known only to faith, revealed only by the Spirit, and touched only when we step into the waters with Jesus—his death and life become ours.

In joyful obedience to your Son,
we celebrate our fellowship in him in faith.
We pray that all who have passed through the
water of baptism, Father God, may continue forever
in the risen life of Jesus Christ our Savior. Amen.

Baptism’s story gives me a stake in the well-being of everyone with whom I share its water. Baptism’s bond trumps all others. Sharing baptism’s heritage and prospect overshadows all other loyalties, all other claims, all other affections. Baptism tells a story of water that is thicker than blood.

Be blessed this day, 

Reggie Kidd+

Image: Baptismal Font, Stykkisholmskirkja, Stykkishomur, Iceland

Participation Requires a Script - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Monday • 7/19/2021

It’s summer, and it’s the first week of the last year of my sixth decade. Another break from the Daily Office seems to be in order. I’m offering, this week, yet more worship themes I’ve developed with my friends at Worship Leader Magazine. We’ll resume our reflections on the Daily Office Monday, July 26.

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Participation Requires a Script

If there were an ESPN-like list of “Top 10 Plays” in worship leading, this event would be somewhere near the top:

The Polish Cardinal Karol Wojtyla had just been elected Pope John Paul II. Most of us think of the Pope as head of worldwide Catholicism, but being Pope primarily makes you bishop of the city-church of Rome. It was the first time in over 400 years Rome had been asked to accept a non-Italian as their lead pastor. When the new Pope walked out onto the balcony overlooking St. Peter’s Square, he was supposed to offer the thousands who were gathered the benediction “To the City and to the World.” It was a set script that everybody knew. 

Instead, John Paul opted for an older, little-used traditional Italian priestly blessing.

“Blessed be Jesus Christ,” he offered in Italian. 

Without missing a beat, the crowd roared back, “May he always be blessed.” 

Benefit of Surprise

The exchange was completely unrehearsed — entirely spontaneous. John Paul only sweetened the moment when he self-deprecatingly ad-libbed about the clumsiness of his use of “your — our — Italian language.” It was the beginning of a bond of affection that would grow greater and greater over time.

I have thought about that exchange often as I’ve sat in worship planning meetings where we’ve tried to figure out how to encourage greater participation among worshipers whom we’ve accustomed to having no idea what’s coming next. Too many times I’ve seen a congregational eye roll when they hear, “This week, we’re going to do something a little different.” They know 10 minutes of mind-numbing explanation will follow. Many of us are afraid that oft-repeated worship elements will become mindless rote. However, there are worship patterns that can shape hearts and give poignant expression to a faith that is both common and personal.

Indeed, there’s a certain extent to which a congregation can only join in when words and actions are so deeply embedded they come to the surface almost unbidden. 

Ancient-Future Participation

This past spring marked the fourteenth anniversary of Bob Webber’s passing on to the presence of the Lord and the saints above. Bob was a great friend to Worship Leader Magazine, and he has taught a generation of us to recognize that, as he so often said, “The road to the future runs through the past.” 

One of the reasons Bob championed “ancient-future worship” passionately was because the ancient Church’s worship was so participatory. Bob sensed that the 20th century Church’s embracing of broadcast media had transformed worship into a spectator sport. When his studies led him to ponder the worship of the ancient Church, he discovered a participatory sport. 

Whole congregations would gather outside their church buildings and “process” (pronounced “prə-SESS”) in. The ministry of the Word, governed by a lectionary, would consist of a worldwide (at least in aspiration) participation in the story of the world and its redemption in Christ. The service would be punctuated by calls and responses (“The Lord be with you” … “And also with you”) and by standing and kneeling. As a gathered kingdom of priests, the congregation would pray for the needs of their community and their world. As a communion of needy sinners on their way to the wedding banquet, the congregation would participate in a “Thanksgiving” (lit. “Eucharist”) of bread and wine. As a brotherhood of ministers, the congregation would be sent out into the world to love and serve in the name of Christ. 

Webber found the perspective thrilling. Returning worship to its dynamic heartbeat was essential, he came to believe, to the survival of the Church, in being and in mission. 

Adapting the Script

One thing Bob taught many of us is that churches can remain “free” as opposed to “formal” and still embrace the ancient call-and-response exchanges. When we do so, we find we greatly empower God’s people to participate in worship.  

Every time I heard the late author Marva Dawn speak, she began by teaching the exchange: “The Lord be with you … And also with you.” She would explain that this shared greeting makes the leader and the congregation fellow worshipers, rather than celebrity and audience. 

When a Scripture reader concludes the reading with the phrase, “The Word of the Lord,” and a congregation responds “Thanks be to God,” our listening becomes active rather than passive. Or, an otherwise mundane mid-worship “meet-and-greet” becomes an act of ministry when we look each other full in the face and share the ancient blessing: “The peace of the Lord be always with you” … “And also with you.” 

Worship leading is about helping a congregation find its voice. It’s not just a voice in song. It’s a voice in proclamation and acclamation as well. Sometimes great worship leadership requires a script — and, of course, knowing how to tweak the script. But first, there’s the script. 

Be blessed this day, 

Reggie Kidd+

I Am Like a Green Olive Tree - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Friday • 7/16/2021
Friday of the Seventh Week After Pentecost (Proper 10)

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 31; 1 Samuel 21:1–15; Acts 13:13–25; Mark 3:7–19a

This morning’s Canticles are: following the OT reading, Canticle 10 (“The Second Song of Isaiah,” Isaiah 55:6–11; BCP, p. 86); following the Epistle reading, Canticle 18 (“A Song to the Lamb,” Revelation 4:11; 5:9–10, 13, BCP, p. 93)

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Once, the Christian singer-songwriter Gloria Gaither asked a room filled with young songwriters two questions. First, she asked how many in the room had written a song based on a psalm in the past year. Almost every person in the room raised a hand. Second, she asked how many had read through the life of David during the past year. No hands. She proceeded to show how many of those psalms depend on the context of David’s life for their meaning. She offered her opinion that to pluck them out of that context was to cherry-pick them. Now, Gloria Gaither is a most gracious lady, so her demeanor was inviting and encouraging rather than off-putting and dispiriting. But she made her point. 

Three psalms emerge from the events of today’s reading in David’s life. 

Psalm 52 and Ahimelech’s death. Fleeing Saul, David sought refuge at Nob with the high priest Ahimelech (great-grandson of Eli and father of Abiathar). David notices that one of Saul’s mercenaries, Doeg the Edomite, is already in the camp. Perhaps wanting to protect Ahimelech from appearing to have chosen David over Saul, David dissembles about why he’s come. He claims to be on a mission for the king. Doeg isn’t buying it. 

David is clever enough to convince Ahimelech to allow him and his men to take the showbread that is ordinarily reserved for the priests and to take the sword of Goliath which David had entrusted to him. But David is not astute enough to realize that Doeg needs to be dealt with. Immediately after David leaves for Gath, Doeg goes and reports to Saul. In turn, Saul commissions Doeg to return and slaughter Ahimelech and all the priests of Nob. The lone escapee is Abiathar, Ahimelech’s son. 

David feels responsible for the murder of Ahimelech: “David said to Abiathar, “I knew on that day, when Doeg the Edomite was there, that he would surely tell Saul. I am responsible for the lives of all your father’s house” (1 Samuel 22:22). 

To remind himself that God will in the end deal with wicked evildoers like Doeg, David composes Psalm 52, “A Maskil of David, when Doeg the Edomite came to Saul and said to him, ‘David has come to the house of Ahimelech.’” All of us, I’m sure, live with some level of frustration at the prevalence of evil and foolishness in the world. Many of us, no doubt, wonder if we’ve done enough to resist that evil and foolishness. David’s song can help: “Why do you boast, O mighty one, of mischief done against the godly? … But God will break you down forever; … The righteous will see, and fear, and will laugh at the evildoer” (Psalm 52:1a,3a,6). The God who is justice and rightness must make justice and rightness prevail in his world. That is one truth the entire Bible doggedly clings to. And so can we. 

And so, our lives can be characterized not by dismay, despair, doom, and gloom, but by thankfulness, trust, and praise: “But I am like a green olive tree in the house of God. I trust in the steadfast love of God forever and ever. I will thank you forever, because of what you have done. In the presence of the faithful I will proclaim your name, for it is good” (Psalm 52:8–9). 

Psalm 56 and Psalm 34: David among the Philistines.* David’s flight takes him all the way to the gates of Philistine Gath, where he pretends to be insane, even to the extent of drooling spittle down his beard to prove he is harmless (1 Samuel 21:10–15). He composes Psalm 56 to ask God’s mercy. Covering his shame, he knows, is the God who has “taken account of my wanderings; [and] put my tears in [his] bottle” (Psalm 56:8 NASB). He loves the coherence of God’s Word all the more more—“In God, whose word I praise,/ In the Lord, whose word I praise . . . I have put my trust” (compare Psalm 56:1, 4, 10–11). Within the exercise of crafting words to articulate his situation and express his feelings, David arrives at a deeper sense of the trustworthiness of God himself. He can pretend to be confused—even mad—because he knows God’s Word is true; and what is happening outside himself does not threaten what is true within himself.

Psalm 34also comes from this period in David’s life when he is seeking asylum by feigning lunacy. His fool’s charade puts him in a unique position to understand that it is the “poor” whom the Lord hears, the “brokenhearted” to whom the Lord is near, and the “crushed in spirit” whom the Lord saves (Psalm 34:17–18).

Be blessed this day, 

Reggie Kidd+

*The following two paragraphs are adapted from Reggie M. Kidd, “David: Israel’s Sweet Singer and Architect of Praise,” in With One Voice: Discovering Christ’s Song in Our Worship (BakerBooks, 2005), p. 55. 

Making Us More Alive - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Thursday • 7/15/2021
Thursday of the Seventh Week After Pentecost (Proper 10)

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 37; 1 Samuel 20:24–42; Acts 13:1–12; Mark 2:23–3:6

This morning’s Canticles are: following the OT reading, Canticle 8 (“The Song of Moses,” Exodus 15, BCP, p. 85); following the Epistle reading, Canticle 19 (“The Song of the Redeemed,” Revelation 15:3–4, BCP, p. 94)

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Today’s incidents about sabbath-rest provide an invitation to take a deeper look at any commandment: how does it further the flourishing and well-being for which we were created? You could reframe Jesus’s saying about sabbath (“People are not made for the sabbath, but the sabbath for people”) to apply to any of the 1o Commandments. For in the end, the commandments are about bringing our lives into sync with God’s life. Thereby, they are about making us more, not less, alive. Does “x,y, or z” activity promote, or hinder, my love for God and for neighbor? 

Jesus’s gleaning and healing don’t, by any means, mean we are to take a casual approach to any of the commandments, including the sabbath. Exactly the opposite. This side of the Cross, each commandment needs to be filtered through the lens of the impact of Christ’s work and the apostles’ teaching. The idea is: how much greater is their weight now, rather than how much less? By becoming himself our sabbath rest (see Colossians 2:17), Christ deepened rather than diminished our responsibility for self- and neighbor-care, and for sanctifying time through worship. If there’s greater freedom, there’s also greater responsibility. (Huzzahs, by the way, to businesses that theoretically could improve their bottom line by staying open on Sundays but choose not to!) 

1 Samuel: how to “honor” parents. Our reading in 1 Samuel today invites reflection on the 5th Commandment. That commandment enjoins honoring father and mother (see Exodus 20:12). Significantly, though, Jesus, God’s own Son, will say, “Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me” (Matthew 10:37a). The bearer of our Heavenly Father’s redemptive anointing merits a higher loyalty than any earthly authority, even parents. It is important that earthly fathers and mothers understand that! It’s worth looking back from this perspective on Jonathan’s treatment of Saul, his father. In Jonathan’s day, God’s redemptive anointing has been transferred from his father Saul to his friend David. It would not be a true “honoring” of his father for Jonathan to have participated in Saul’s attempt to murder David. Jonathan gives his father every chance to show a softening of demeanor. Alas, Saul does not relent in his murderous intent. Jonathan chooses loyalty to God’s anointed, surrendering the prospect of his own anointing as successor to Saul as king. Jonathan chooses wisely. 

Many of us as followers of Christ have had to make similar choices, even if reluctantly and as lovingly as possible. Often allegiance to Christ has meant following different career paths than our parents had laid out for us, going to churches that seem odd to our folks, taking on different philosophies of child-rearing than we’d been raised with. But Christ and the commandment call us to do so as respectfully as we can, mindful that we never know what God himself may be doing in hearts that had long grown cold to the faith. Sometimes, we find those stories turn in delightfully surprising directions. 

Be blessed this day, 

Reggie Kidd+

Image: In this 1768 parchment, Jekuthiel Sofer emulated decalogue at the Esnoga Source: [1] at Bibliotheca Rosenthaliana, Amsterdam HS.ROS.PL.a-33. Jekuthiel Sofer, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

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)

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“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)

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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)

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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)

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 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)

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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)

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 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.