Trusting God In the Best and Worst of Times - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Friday • 8/13/2021
Friday of the Eleventh Week After Pentecost (Proper 14)

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 102; 2 Samuel 15:19–37; Acts 21:37–22:16; Mark 10:46–52

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)

---

2 Samuel 15: David’s walk of shame. King David’s departure from Jerusalem marks the nadir of his rule: “But David went up the ascent of the Mount of Olives, weeping as he went, with his head covered and walking barefoot; and all the people who were with him covered their heads and went up, weeping as they went” (2 Samuel 15:30). As he hits bottom, though, he begins to show once again signs that he is indeed “a man after God’s own heart.” Vindication will follow.

He fully accepts the disgrace that his actions have merited. As one of his old enemies, a Saul loyalist, throws rocks and dirt at him while calling down curses upon him, David says: “If he is cursing because the Lord has said to him, ‘Curse David,’ who then shall say, ‘Why have you done so?’ … [L]et him curse; for the Lord has bidden him. It may be that the Lord will look on my distress, and the Lord will repay me with good for this cursing of me today” (2 Samuel 16:10–12). 

Shrewdly, because he does believe the Lord has not written him off, David leaves behind spies who will report the usurper Absalom’s machinations to him. And he encourages loyalists to stay and undermine Absalom while feigning loyalty to him (2 Samuel 15:32–37). 

David refuses to disrupt Jerusalem’s worship by taking the ark of the covenant into the desert with him: “Then the king said to Zadok [the priest], ‘Carry the ark of God back into the city. If I find favor in the eyes of the Lord, he will bring me back and let me see both it and the place where it stays. But if he says, ‘I take no pleasure in you,’ here I am, let him do to me what seems good to him’” (2 Samuel 15:25–26). 

Indicative of the heart re-set that is taking place within David is the fact that, according to its superscription, Psalm 3 pours forth from David on this occasion: 

Of David, when he fled from his son Absalom:

1 Lord, how many adversaries I have!
how many there are who rise up against me!
2 How many there are who say of me,
“There is no help for him in his God.”
3 But you, O Lord, are a shield about me;
you are my glory, the one who lifts up my head.

David knows that the shame he experiences that day does not mark God’s final word about him. He is confident God is his champion and will maintain him on the far side of this well-earned disciplining. 

4 I call aloud upon the Lord,
and he answers me from his holy hill;

David knows that even though he leaves the ark of the presence of God behind in Jerusalem, Yahweh will hear his cries for help even in the heart of the deepest desert. 

5 I lie down and go to sleep;
I wake again, because the Lord sustains me.

Such a peace has settled over his soul that even under these shaming circumstances he knows he will sleep soundly at night, and will wake the next day expecting his Lord’s care and provision. 

6 I do not fear the multitudes of people
who set themselves against me all around.
7 Rise up, O Lord; set me free, O my God;
surely, you will strike all my enemies across the face,
you will break the teeth of the wicked.

David knows his God’s opinion of him counts far more than that of the consensus currently against him. And he knows that it is Yahweh who will be able to set things straight far better than he ever could. 

8 Deliverance belongs to the Lord.
Your blessing be upon your people!

And remarkably, the bottom line of his prayer is that God will work more to the betterment of His people than to the betterment of David himself. 

I pray that in both the best and the worst of times such bold and resolute faith takes hold of and sustains each of us. 

Be blessed this day, 

Reggie Kidd+

Image: Adaptation from Maciejowski Bible, Leaf 45 (http://www.medievaltymes.com/courtyard/maciejowski_images_45.htm)Unknown authorUnknown author, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Not to Be Served But to Serve - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Thursday • 8/12/2021
Thursday of the Eleventh Week After Pentecost (Proper 14)

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 105; 2 Samuel 15:1–18; Acts 21:27–36; Mark 10:32–45

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)

---

2 Samuel 15: Absalom makes his move. Gradually, Absalom starts showing up at the city gates (the places where judges settled disputes) and saying to plaintiffs: 

“‘See, your claims are good and right; but there is no one deputed by the king to hear you. … If only I were judge in the land! Then all who had a suit or cause might come to me, and I would give them justice.’ Whenever people came near to do obeisance to him, he would put out his hand and take hold of them, and kiss them. Thus Absalom did to every Israelite who came to the king for judgment; so Absalom stole the hearts of the people of Israel” (2 Samuel 15:2–3). 

Four years later, Absalom has won such a following that he can muster an army at Hebron (David’s original capital) and prepare to march on Jerusalem. It’s at this point that King David decides to flee rather than risk the destruction of the City of God — he leaves behind 10 concubines to satisfy the lusts that David himself had awoken in Absalom back in the days of Bathsheba. As in the days when he was on the run from Saul, David heads back into the desert for refuge, this time from his own son.  

Acts 21: For his part, the apostle Paul is wrongly accused of bringing Gentiles into the inner precincts, beyond the limits of the Jerusalem Temple’s Court of the Gentiles. The first century Jewish historian Josephus tells us that multiple inscriptions around the Temple area warned that such infractions meant death. 

(A complete tablet was discovered in 1871 and now hangs in the Istanbul Archaeology Museum. In 1936 a fragment of another inscription was found and is held in Jerusalem’s Israel Museum. The text is as follows: “No stranger is to enter within the balustrade round the temple and enclosure. Whoever is caught will be himself responsible for his ensuing death.”* To this day, visitors to the Temple Mount [now the site of the Al-Aqsa Mosque] can well understand how explosive a violation of purification sensibilities there would be. [I accidentally nearly caused an incident myself on the Temple Mount, some years ago. But that’s a story for another time.])

Jews who are from Ephesus and who are hostile to Paul have been looking to trip Paul up. They’ve observed him being accompanied around Jerusalem by their fellow Ephesian Trophimus. Trophimus is a Gentile. Then they see Paul taking men they do not recognize into the inner precincts of the Temple. They don’t know these men are Jewish believers whose purification rites Paul is sponsoring. Paul’s detractors wrongly assume that Gentile-friendly and Law-transcending Paul is brazenly breaching boundaries (Acts 21:29). They seize him and begin to drag him out. The only thing that prevents them from immediately stoning him (as had happened with Stephen—and recall Paul’s complicity in that act!), is that the Roman garrison is alerted and comes to Paul’s rescue. 

To me, the most arresting line in this account is: “…and immediately the doors were shut” (Acts 21:30). Paul has done everything he possibly can to keep his fellow countrymen from closing the door on their own Messiah. His missionary modus operandi is “to the Jew first, and then to the Greek” (Romans 1:16–17; Acts 3:26; 13:46). Hear his heart for them as he writes to the Gentile Christians in Rome who have become dismissive of Jewish non-Christians, “Just as you were once disobedient to God but have now received mercy because of their disobedience, so they have now been disobedient in order that, by the mercy shown to you, they too may now receive mercy. For God has imprisoned all in disobedience so that he may be merciful to all” (Romans 11:30–31). Paul refuses to turn his back on his people, even as they definitively and finally shut him out of the Temple. 

Add Mark’s perspective. It has been sobering to read today about Absalom, the narcissist who wants to elevate himself by virtue of his “great hair” and his false kisses. And it’s shocking as well to read about the disciples of Christ (James and John) who try to make a similar power-grab: “Let us sit on your right hand and your left”! Praise be, Absalom and James and John don’t get the last word. Jesus does. 

Jesus explains for the third time that the trip to Jerusalem will eventuate in his death and resurrection. Dealing with James and John’s lust for power, Jesus lays down perhaps the most memorable line in all of Mark’s gospel: “For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45). And to God’s glory, that is the cruciform pattern we’ve seen in Paul. By reason of his missionary career, he has endured a definitive rejection from his countrymen. Knowing that you have been loved by the One who “came not to be served but to serve and to give his life a ransom for many” makes all the difference in the world. I pray that that is true for you and for me. 

Be blessed this day,

Reggie Kidd+

Image: yoav dothan, GFDL, via Wikimedia Commons

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temple_Warning_inscription

Grace in Action - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Wednesday • 8/11/2021
Wednesday of the Eleventh Week After Pentecost (Proper 14)

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 101; Psalm 109; 2 Samuel 14:21–33; Acts 21:15–26; Mark 10:17–31

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)

---

2 Samuel 14: grace only partially realized. In the wake of his monstrous sins against Bathsheba and Uriah, David can appreciate the grace by which Gods covers his sins (Psalm 32:1) and renews a right spirit within him (Psalm 51:10). He can even find a way to extend mercy to Mephibosheth, the crippled grandson of his former tormentor Saul (2 Samuel 9). 

But David cannot find a way both to forgive and to establish a renewed and reconciled relationship with his estranged son Absalom. In no small part, as we see in today’s and tomorrow’s readings, Absalom has become a monster himself: an entitled, power-grabbing, narcissist.  

With the death of David’s firstborn son Amnon, Absalom has as good a claim as anyone to be next in line for the throne. Besides that, he is of regal appearance —

“Now in all Israel there was no one to be praised so much for his beauty as Absalom; from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head there was no blemish in him. When he cut the hair of his head (for at the end of every year he used to cut it; when it was heavy on him, he cut it), he weighed the hair of his head, two hundred shekels by the king’s weight” (2 Samuel 14:25–26). 

No member of any 80s hairband had anything on Absalom (though my own 70s afro may have given him some competition). Problematically, nobody outranked Absalom in narcissism and sense of entitlement!   

David has permitted an angry Absalom to return to Jerusalem, though he senses that he must keep his still-smoldering son at arm’s length. David refuses to see him for two years. Twice, Absalom summons Joab to try to get him to intervene. Twice, Joab ghosts him. Absalom finally gets Joab’s attention by burning his barley field (2 Samuel 14:28–32). He shows himself to be no less a manipulator than David had been in the murder of Uriah in the first place, nor what he himself had been in the murder of Amnon. David finally relents. He receives a son who is prostrate in body if not in soul, and kisses him (2 Samuel 14:33), though that kiss will be answered with treachery in the next chapter. 

Forgiveness and reconciliation are there by way of promise in the Old Testament, but their reality is still a long way off. 

Acts 21: grace in action. In vivid contrast is Paul’s demeanor upon his arrival in Jerusalem with his gift from the Gentile churches. He later explains to the Roman governor Felix: “Now after some years I came to bring alms to my nation and to offer sacrifices” (Acts 24:17). In fact, he came merely to bring alms, but before he could do so the sacrifices had been demanded of him (Acts 21:20–25). Luke never tells us whether Paul got to present his gift; nor does Paul ever discuss it in his letters that follow. Perhaps he did present the gift to a grateful Jerusalem church. Perhaps he was completely blown off. But where Luke’s narrative should recount a great celebration of the power of God’s gospel to reconcile Jew and Gentile, there is silence. Crickets! Instead, Paul is put upon to prove that he is still a good Jew by undergoing purification rites at the Temple and by underwriting the expenses for the rites of four other individuals. 

Paul’s response? He doesn’t protest. He doesn’t complain. He doesn’t lay down a condition that the Gentiles’ gift first be accepted. He simply complies. Because of Christ, he is able to lay aside all bitterness and wrath, all sense of entitlement, any possible sense of being belittled. He accedes to their wishes. Because of Christ, his life becomes grace in action. 

Mark 10: true riches. And that is precisely the life into which Jesus invites the rich man of Mark 10. It is a life of not being controlled by anything but the love of the one who says “Follow me.” When I realize that Jesus is indeed the personification of God’s goodness, everything else fades in importance, whether “great hair,” pride of accomplishment, pride of place, financial security ... anything. 

Be blessed this day, 

Reggie Kidd+

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

Discerning God's Will - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Tuesday • 8/10/2021
Tuesday of the Eleventh Week After Pentecost (Proper 14)

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 97; Psalm 99; Psalm 100; 2 Samuel 14:1–20; Acts 21:1–14; Mark 10:1–16

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)

---

2 Samuel 14: discerning God’s will can be hard: part one. There is a fine ambiguity in the wording of 2 Samuel 13:33. The verse can be rendered as the NRSV has it: “And the heart of King David longed to go out to Absalom; for he was comforted regarding Amnon, since he was dead.” Or it can be rendered as the notes in the New Oxford Annotated Bible suggest: “The king’s spirit for marching out against Absalom was exhausted.” 

David is conflicted in his feelings for his son Absalom. The last verse of 2 Samuel 13 seems to indicate (according to the latter of the two readings above) that David’s impulse to pursue and punish Absalom for the murder of Amnon dies down after the passage of time, when David is consoled at the loss of Amnon. But, says, 2 Samuel 14:1, Absalom is still on his mind. 

Joab, David’s general-in-chief, concocts a plan to convince David to reconcile with Absalom. Should David decide to exact life-for-life, the kingdom would not be well served by the loss of both Amnon and Absalom, first and second in line for the kingship. Joab secures the services of a skilled actress. She presents herself to the king as a widow survived by two sons, one of which kills the other. People have demanded she surrender the remaining son to “the avenger of blood” (2 Samuel 13:11). To do so, however, would leave her personally desolate and her estate with no heir. 

Even though David sees through the ruse and detects Joab’s machinations, he grants the point. He realizes the need to extend mercy to Absalom. We’ll see in tomorrow’s reading that mercy goes only part of the way. There’s never a genuine reconciliation with Absalom, and more’s the pity. 

Acts 21: discerning God’s will can be hard: part two. For a year and a half, Paul has been taking up a collection from the wealthier Gentile churches in Greece and Asia Minor to take care of the impoverished Jewish church of Jerusalem. It is his earnest hope that this symbol of Gentile-Jewish unity in Christ will help all believers appreciate the extraordinary thing that God is doing to restore wholeness to the fractured human race. He understands that there is great peril for him in his undertaking. The Jerusalem church may or may not accept the gift. Non-christian Jews in Jerusalem may conspire against him. He may run afoul of Roman authorities. Thus, from Corinth, he writes to believers in Rome on the eve of the trip to deliver the collection to the church of Jerusalem: “Now I urge you, brothers and sisters, by our Lord Jesus Christ and by the love of the Spirit, to strive together with me in your prayers to God for me, that I may be rescued from those who are disobedient in Judea, and that my service for Jerusalem may prove acceptable to the saints; so that I may come to you in joy by the will of God and relax in your company” (Romans 15:30–32).  

Today’s passage narrates that trip. Paul is certain that this path is one that the Lord has laid before him. As he has already explained to the Ephesian elders, despite whatever imprisonments and punishments may lie before him, “…I do not count my life of any value to myself, if only I may finish my course and the ministry that I received from the Lord Jesus, to testify to the good news of God’s grace” (Acts 20:24). That is why he resists the well-meaning and seemingly Spirit-inspired urgings not to go to Jerusalem he encounters at two stops along his way. Sometimes, to follow God’s will you have to go against the flow. 

Mark 10: discerning God’s will can be simple (if not easy). Jesus answers a question about the permissibility of divorce, and he observes people acting dismissively toward children. God brings a man and a woman together as “one flesh” for the rest of their lives, he insists. And he sets the highest priority of care on “little children.” The Lord lays before me (and I will speak personally, because all our life situations are different) two matters in which God’s will is unambiguously clear: I am to be utterly committed to my marriage, and I am to place the highest premium on the well-being of the little ones to whom the kingdom of God belongs. Period.

Collect for Proper 14: Grant to us, Lord, we pray, the spirit to think and do always those things that are right, that we, who cannot exist without you, may by you be enabled to live according to your will; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Be blessed this day,

Reggie Kidd+

Image: Adapted from "Wild and endangered Coho salmon, North Umpqua River, Deadline Falls" by F.Eatherington is marked with CC0 1.0

God's Redemptive Power for Sin-Wracked People - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Monday • 8/9/2021
Monday of the Eleventh Week After Pentecost (Proper 14) 

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 89; 2 Samuel 13:23–39; Acts 20:17–38; Mark 9:42–50

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)

---

During the next two weeks, 2 Samuel will describe the fulfillment of Nathan’s words to David: “the sword shall never depart from your house” (2 Samuel 12:10). Just as David had taken Bathsheba and murdered Uriah, so sexual violation and death are unleashed within his house. 

2 Samuel: when a spirit of rage and bitterness rules. Today’s reading follows the cringe-worthy account of the way Amnon, David’s firstborn son and the nation’s crown prince, craftily and deviously forces himself on his half-sister Tamar. Horribly, and entirely too predictably, no sooner are his lust and will to power violently satisfied than his emotions flip: “Then Amnon was seized with a very great loathing for her; his loathing was even greater than the lust he had felt for her” (2 Samuel 13:15). Unwilling to marry her (as called for by Exodus 22:16 and Deuteronomy 22:28–29), he commands his servant: “Rid me of this woman. … Throw her out and bolt the door behind her!” (2 Samuel 13:17 NJB)). He won’t even say her name. First, he robs her of her innocence, then of her identity. 

Though David is furious with Amnon, and though he knows it is his job as king to “administer justice and equity to all his people” (see 2 Samuel 8:15). David does nothing to address the wrong done to Tamar: “When King David heard of all these things, he became very angry, but he would not punish his son Amnon, because he loved him, for he was his firstborn” (2 Samuel 13:21). There’s no mention of love for his daughter; his sin of omission is shameful. And for two years, Absalom, who is Tamar’s full brother, silently nurses his rage against Amnon for violating his sister and leaving her desolate and shamed. His subsequent actions betray fury against his father as well. 

In today’s account, we see the beginning of Absalom’s foolhardy, faithless, and ultimately fateful design to right the wrong done to his sister and then to displace his father as king.

Amnon, like his father David, has taken a woman he has no right to. Absalom (like his father David, who orchestrated Uriah’s death) orchestrates Amnon’s murder. He lures him to a party and has his men assassinate him. Absalom then goes into self-exile for three years in Geshur, home of his maternal grandfather Talmai. David is grieved. He’s lost his firstborn, and the kingdom has lost its heir apparent. But again, David does nothing. He eventually accepts Absalom back into Jerusalem (though he will keep him at arm’s length). “And the heart of the king went out, yearning for Absalom; for he was now consoled over the death of Amnon” (2 Samuel 13:39). 

Acts: when the Spirit of God comes. What a different spirit courses through Paul’s address to the Ephesian elders! Genuine love and affection have united the apostle and this group of people among whom he has lived. He has made it clear that his message of “repentance toward God and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ” (Acts 20:21) is about God’s free and abundant grace. He has supported himself with his own hands while he has proclaimed God’s kingdom. He has sought to model Jesus’s own teaching (and because it is a saying that doesn’t appear in any of the gospels, it is especially to be prized): “It is more blessed to give than to receive” (Acts 20:35). 

The ongoing saga of David’s dynasty shows how God’s redemptive power and Kingdom purposes work their way into human history through utterly fallen and altogether sin-wracked people. If our Sunday school heroes like David had not been so whitewashed for us through the years, perhaps we would be more patient with the frailty, flaws, foolishness, and failures in figures of more recent history. God’s Redeemer doesn’t come for people who don’t need redemption. 

At the same time, it is good to be reminded that God’s Redeemer has indeed come for people in need of redemption. God has purchased his church with the blood of his own dear Son (Acts 20:28), and has opened to us the door of repentance and faith. The church is the place where Jesus’s presence, by the Holy Spirit, makes people new. He transforms takers into givers, and he makes those who have been shamed or aggrieved into those who know themselves to be beloved and reconciled. 

Collect for Proper 14: Grant to us, Lord, we pray, the spirit to think and do always those things that are right, that we, who cannot exist without you, may by you be enabled to live according to your will; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Be blessed this day, 

Reggie Kidd+

Image: "Illuminated Manuscript, The Rochester Bible, Walters Art Museum Ms. W.18, fol.199r" by Walters Art Museum Illuminated Manuscripts is marked with CC0 1.0 This large-format copy of the New Testament was created at, and for, Rochester Cathedral in Rochester, England, in the first half of the twelfth century. The manuscript is an important survival, for it is one part of what is believed to be the earliest decorated Bible produced at the priory scriptorium at Rochester. Originally a five volume work, only one other volume, British Library, Royal I.C.VII., has survived. The book’s large size indicates it was designed to be read aloud, either during services or at meals. Large, fanciful initials filled with foliage, dragons, and human faces begin each section of the text, and their vibrant color and intricate designs capture the essence of Romanesque manuscript illumination. Initial “P” opening the Epistle of St. Paul to the Ephesians.

Paul Assaults Idolatry - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Friday • 8/6/2021
Friday of the Tenth Week After Pentecost (Proper 13)

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 88; 2 Samuel 12:1–14; Acts 19:21–41; Mark 9:14–29

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)

---

2 Samuel: when you discover you are a monster. Through the prophet Nathan’s parable about a rich man who steals his neighbor’s favorite ewe, David realizes he is a monster. He has stolen his neighbor’s wife, and committed murder to cover his transgression. He confesses his sin (the content of which he captures in Psalms 51 and 32). Nathan pronounces him forgiven, but also outlines consequences he will not be able to escape. 

If you like, you can view my homily on this passage at the Cathedral Church of St Luke (Orlando) from 8/1/2021 on YouTube, “When You Discover You Are a Monster.”

Mark: Jesus’s frontal assault on evil. Sin’s grip on us can be subtle and covert or it can be not subtle and overt. Many, probably most, of us keep our sinning under cover. In today’s account in Mark, however, Jesus confronts evil head on. I thank God that Jesus showed his power to confront demonic oppression directly. I thank God that he mounted the cross to conquer the “prince of the power of the air” on his own turf (as Athanasius so nicely put it). And I thank God for those in the church whom he has called and gifted even today to discern direct demonic activity in people’s lives and to call upon Jesus’s exorcizing power. 

Acts: Paul’s subtle assault on idolatry. Paul’s promotion of Christ prompts pushback from those whose livelihoods depend upon the veneration of Artemis, Ephesus’s patron deity. It does not appear, however, that Paul has launched a frontal anti-Artemis campaign. His approach is more subtle. He has preached Christ, and people have made their own inferences: if Christ is lord, then Artemis can’t be. And they are right!

I never ceased to be amazed at the profundity of the apostle Paul’s ministry strategy. Ephesians worship a rock that had supposedly fallen from heaven centuries beforehand. Ephesians named the rock “Artemis” and built a shrine to it/her that was so magnificent the structure was considered one of the “Seven Wonders of the World.” According to an A.D. 2nd century inscription, in exchange for the city’s being the nurturer (hē trophos) of this rock, Artemis had made the city “most radiant in glory” (endoxatera).* 

According to his letter to the Ephesians, Paul’s teaching, by contrast, is that Christ nurtures (ektrephein) the church, his bride, and makes her “radiant in glory” as a free gift (endoxa — Ephesians 5:27,29). And while the cheers to Artemis will go up for two hours, “Great is Artemis! Great is Artemis!” (see Acts 19:28), Paul will write to Timothy, his ministry-delegate in Ephesus, that what is “great” is something quite different: “[G]reat is the mystery of godliness” (1 Timothy 3:16a). And at the heart of Paul’s “great mystery of godliness” is not a lifeless rock, but “the one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus … who was revealed in the flesh, was vindicated in the Spirit, seen by angels, proclaimed among the nations, believed on in the world, taken up in glory” (1 Timothy 2:5; 3:16). The great mystery of godliness is Jesus, not a deaf, unfeeling rock. 

The whole thing invites a pondering of how powerfully Jesus challenges people’s basic religious assumptions and spiritual instincts — including our own. Before what lifeless and meaningless “rocks” are we inclined to prostrate ourselves? Do I seek solace in food or drink or Netflix or gambling? Do I hope for meaning in life from success in work or school or investments or politics? 

How, by contrast, does “the one mediator, the man Christ Jesus … the great mystery of godliness,” breathe life into the dead spaces in our lives? 

Be blessed this day, 

Reggie Kidd+ 

Image: "Ephesus Archaelogical Museum, Seljuk" by hugh llewelyn is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0

*R. Oster, “Holy days in honor of Artemis,” in G. H. R. Horsley, ed., New Documents Illustrating Early Christianity, Volume 4 (MacQuarie University, 1987), No. 19, pp. 75–75. 

The Promise of the Transfiguration - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Thursday • 8/5/2021
Thursday of the Tenth Week After Pentecost (Proper 13)

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 83; Psalm 145; 2 Samuel 11:1–27; Acts 19:11–20; Mark 9:2–13 

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)

---

2 Samuel: David becomes a monster. The David of today’s account is hardly a “man after the Lord’s own heart” (see 1 Samuel 13:14; Acts 13:22). He’s at the height of his power. The prophet Nathan has revealed God’s promise of  an everlasting dynasty. Yet he stumbles. Horribly. It is as though David intends to prove ahead of time the truth of British Lord Acton’s 1887 dictum: “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men.” David becomes a monster, and we cringe as we observe. 

God has graciously given him power to shepherd His flock and to administer justice on behalf of His people. Instead, David abuses his power. He fleeces the flock by taking Bathsheba from Uriah, and he breaks Commandments Five through Ten in the process.  

If you like, you can view my homily on this passage at the Cathedral Church of St Luke (Orlando) from 7/25/2021 on YouTube, “David Becomes a Monster.”

Mark: Jesus’s transfiguration and its promise. The transfiguration of Jesus promises us that all that is monstrous within us will one day be vanquished. Jesus appears garbed in the glorified humanity that will be his upon his resurrection. His will be a glorified humanity which we will share as well. It was difficult for Peter to understand what was going on that day: “He did not know what to say…” (Mark 9:6). 

Later, with this very moment in mind (“we had been eyewitnesses of his majesty”—2 Peter 1:16), Peter describes the significance of his glimpse of God’s revivification of our fallen human nature. Jesus’s transfiguration had been a preview of our becoming “participants of the divine nature. For this very reason, you must make every effort to support your faith with goodness, and goodness with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with endurance, and endurance with godliness, and godliness with mutual affection, and mutual affection with love” (2 Peter 1:3–7). 

The wonder is, the life of the future has taken hold of our lives right now. We will one day be entirely filled with goodness and faith and knowledge and self-control and godliness and mutual affection and love. Yet even now, from Peter’s perspective, that life has the power to work its way into the very fiber of our being. Praise be! We don’t have to surrender to being monsters. 

Acts: Paul’s battle against evil. Paul’s ministry is to declare the good news of God’s rescuing us from sin and evil and death through Christ Jesus. God attests to the truthfulness of Paul’s message by granting miraculous healings and deliverances, even by means of articles of clothing that had touched his skin (Acts 19:11–12). 

Inevitably, Paul meets resistance from “the other side.” A subtle form of resistance comes in the form of imitation—imitation by those who know to invoke the name of Jesus, but without knowing Jesus (Acts 19:13–15). Their beating at the hands of a demon-possessed man sends the imitators scurrying (Acts 19:16). It so happens that archaeological evidence shows the people of Ephesus and its environs to be unusually attracted to phenomena that we would think of as magical and esoteric. So, when word gets out that the Jesus whom Paul preaches is not to be trifled with, there is a strong response. Many practitioners of magical arts become believers in Christ, and jettison the artifacts of their former way of life (Acts 19:17–19). 

Again and again, the Bible presses upon us God’s relentless pursuit of the human race. He will not surrender us to our worst instincts. He has come to us in his Son, with the promise to eliminate the evil in us and to transfigure us no less than he transfigured his Son, and to call us no less beloved than the Beloved himself. 

Be blessed this day, 

Reggie Kidd+

Image: Adapted from "Paul and Thecla fresco" by David J. Lull is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

From Gloom to Joy - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Wednesday • 8/4/2021
Wednesday of the Tenth Week After Pentecost (Proper 13)

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 119:97–120; 2 Samuel 9:1–13; Acts 19:1–10; Mark 8:34–9:1

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)

---

A well-meaning preacher I once knew seemed to have stalled out on one message: “Repent!” The only way to feel good about your Christian life was to feel bad. If your job wasn’t going well, you needed to repent. If you felt lonely, you needed to repent. If you weren’t sure about God’s calling on your life, you needed to repent. Honestly, going to his church was depressing. 

Acts: from gloom to joy. In Ephesus, Paul comes upon a group of twelve “disciples” stuck in the same rut. At first, Paul assumes that they are Christians, but he soon finds out they are not yet Christians. Their “discipleship” consists of dedication to the memory of John the Baptist. Paul instructs them, however, that John’s message had been one of penitent preparation only. John had ministered, Paul explains, in anticipation of something — Someone! — better: “John baptized with the baptism of repentance, telling the people to believe in the one who was to come after him, that is, in Jesus” (Acts 19:4).

When Paul points them to the person of Jesus instead of to an experience of repentance, suddenly the Holy Spirit falls upon them, and they display extraordinary signs of the inbreaking of God’s kingdom: “…they spoke in tongues and prophesied” (Acts 19:6). Unanticipated ecstasy takes over from gloom. Excitement about the future replaces mere memorializing of the past. 

An important takeaway for us is that Paul doesn’t try to replace one kind of experience (doleful regret about themselves and the sad state of the world) with another kind of experience (joyful exuberance). Rather, he points them to Jesus. The Greek idiom Paul uses twice in Acts 19:4 is “believe into Jesus” (emphasis mine). The idea is “place your whole person, your life, your destiny, your hopes, your sense of well-being—place it all into the hands of Jesus.” 

When that entrustment happens, heaven opens, and the Spirit comes. For Jesus is sin-bearer, gift-giver, joy-bringer, hope-instiller, love-inspirer. Resting in his strong hands, we find the Spirit’s life being breathed into us and then flowing out of us: “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control” (Galatians 5:22). 

Mark: “take up your cross.” “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it” — Mark 9:34–35. The testimony of two millennia of Spirit-kissed Christ-followers is, therefore, that crosses can be taken up joyfully, martyrdoms can be endured while singing, and self-denying missions can be undertaken without regret. “The power of his resurrection” always accompanies “the fellowship of Christ’s sufferings” because through it all, Christ himself is there, for, as Paul says, he is faithful (Philippians 3:9–10). 

2 Samuel: David’s kindness to Mephibosheth. Among all the failings the Old Testament records flash a few displays of Kingdom life. King David’s deep affection for Jonathan, son of Saul, leads him to make life-long provision for Jonathan’s son Mephibosheth, who had been accidentally crippled in 2 Samuel 4:4. 

Mephibosheth becomes a lovely picture of all of us who know ourselves to be broken in some way. And yet we have been welcomed to the Table of God’s anointed and lovingly cared for. Some of us live with physical or mental disabilities, some with moral struggles or besetting sins, some with fractured homes or other challenging life situations. Whatever our infirmities, in Jesus David’s greater Son, we have a King who is merciful, generous, and welcoming. 

Be blessed this day, 

Reggie Kidd+ 

Image: The Albertype Co. (Brooklyn), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Seeing Everything Clearly - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Tuesday • 8/3/2021
Tuesday of the Tenth Week After Pentecost (Proper 13)

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 78; 2 Samuel 7:18–29; Acts 18:12–28; Mark 8:22–33

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)

---

Mark: “men like trees walking.” In yesterday’s Gospel reading, Jesus denounced the reformist and pietistic way of the Pharisees and the secularist and accommodationist way of the Herodians. Today, he begins to unveil his own way. Today begins the campaign to show that the way of the cross is the way of life. 

Today’s passage is the hinge on which Mark’s Gospel pivots to this theme.* Mark’s is the only gospel to tell the remarkable story of the blind man who, at Jesus’s first touch gains just enough sight to see blurred “men like trees walking,” and who thus needs a second touch from Jesus for his blindness to be completely cured and for him to “see everything clearly” (Mark 8:25). 

The account is a brilliant setup to Peter’s confession that Jesus is indeed the Christ (Peter “sees” the truth, but only with blurred vision—Mark 8:29). Peter’s confession requires Jesus’s further explanation that the mission of the Son of Man (i.e., the Christ) is to suffer, be rejected, die, and rise again (Peter and the other disciples must “see” this truth in order to “see everything clearly”—Mark 8:31–33). Twice more in chapters nine and ten, Jesus will have to outline his messianic mission (Mark 9:30-32; 10:32–34). He will round out the entire section with the healing of blind Bartimaeus (Mark 10:46–52), a miracle that does not have to be repeated, coming as it does on the far side of the full explanation that, “For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45). 

There is good reason for the BCP’s prayer: “Mercifully grant that we, walking in the way of the cross, may find it none other than the way of life and peace” (BCP, p. 99, 220, 272, 420). Life and peace come by means of the cross, not by self-fixes, and not by system-fixes. 

Acts: learning “the way of God.” The account of Apollos, Priscilla, and Aquila in Acts shows how “the way of the cross” turns out to be “the way of life and peace.” 

Apollos, a Jewish Christian from Alexandria, is a brilliant student both of Scripture and of contemporary rhetoric (Acts 18:24). He has been well instructed in the “the things of Jesus” (18:25), meaning apparently that he is well acquainted with the life and teachings of Jesus, and with the ways that Jesus fulfills Old Testament promises about the coming of the Messiah (Acts 18:25a). Moreover, he glows with the fire of the Spirit (zeōn tō pneumati). Curiously, however, his understanding of baptism only extends to John’s baptism of preparatory repentance (Acts 18:24–25). His experience is of a piece with the fluid relationship between faith, repentance, water-baptism, and Spirit-baptism in the book of Acts. However, there appears to be something he doesn’t quite understand about the faith.

Priscilla and Aquila nicely display “the way of the cross” by the way they minister to Apollos.

First, when they decide to address deficiencies in his presentations in Ephesus, they do so privately not publicly. Rather than calling him out in front of everybody else, they take him aside for “more accurate” instruction (Acts 18:26). 

Second, they sense the need to augment his accurate understanding of “the things of Jesus,” the facts about Jesus’s life, ministry, and Messiahship. These facts will be powerful weapons in Apollos’s arsenal to persuade people to become Christians. But Priscilla and Aquila know that there is more to “the things of Jesus” than just getting people’s intellectual assent about those facts. Potential believers will need, and thus Apollos will need, to understand “the way of God” (Acts 18:26). Apollos needs to understand that there is a way of living that follows from those facts. 

Apollos receives the Ephesian church’s blessing to cross the Aegean Sea to minister in Achaia (Greece), in the city of Corinth (Acts 18:27). There he is greatly helpful. Yet, as we will see in a few weeks when we read 1 Corinthians (Propers 19–24), misunderstandings emerge in Corinth. Having lived among the Corinthians themselves, Priscilla and Aquila understand the Corinthians’ susceptibility to impressive rhetoric and powerful spiritual display. They want Apollos to understand that “the way of God” is the way of humility and service. 

Apollos is an excellent example of the way that many of us must learn that our strengths can also be our weaknesses. Our strengths must be diligently and relentlessly yoked to Christ and his cross. Paul tells the Corinthians not to pit him and Apollos against each other: “I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth” (1 Corinthians 3:6). The “way of God” is not about taking pride in who baptized you, or about how hyper-intellectual your faith is, or about how super-spiritual your experience of God is. The “way of God” is the way of the cross. 

Be blessed this day, 

Reggie Kidd+

*Slightly altered here, this and the following two paragraphs appeared in the DDD for Wednesday of this year’s Week 4 of Epiphany. 

Image: Adapted from: Wellcome Library, London. Wellcome Images images@wellcome.ac.uk http://wellcomeimages.org Christ heals a blind man by placing clay on his eye. Stipple engraving by R.A. Artlett after J.D. Crittendon. By: John Denton Crittendonafter: Richard Austin ArtlettPublished: Copyrighted work available under Creative Commons Attribution only licence CC BY 4.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

On the Wrong Footing - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Monday • 8/2/2021
Monday of the Tenth Week After Pentecost (Proper 13) 

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 80; 2 Samuel 7:1–17; Acts 18:–11; Mark 8:11–21

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)

---

There are so many ways we can put our relationship with God on the wrong footing. Mercifully, the Lord is not content to let us get away with it.

2 Samuel: getting straight on who is the gift-giver. After God allowed him tohave a fine cedar house, David wished to return the favor. Commentators suggest David would thereby make himself God’s benefactor rather than vice versa. At first, the prophet Nathan affirms David’s plan. But the Lord intervenes. He tells Nathan to inform David that he’s not the person to build God a “house.” Instead, God will do that “house” building. In God’s ongoing and relentless grace, David will build, not a physical building, but a royal house: a dynasty, a lineage that will always rule.

What Yahweh will do for David is infinitely greater than anything David could do for Yahweh! “Thus says the Lord of Hosts, ‘I took you from the pasture, from following the sheep to be prince over my people Israel’” (2 Samuel 7:8). The leaders of Israel  acknowledged David as their shepherd: “The Lord said to you: It is you who shall be shepherd of my people Israel, you who shall be ruler over Israel” (1 Samuel 5:2). And Yahweh will do extraordinary things for his people through the shepherd-kings who follow David. He will plant them in their homeland, free them from evildoers, grant rest from their enemies, take up residence among them, and provide perpetuity to David’s line (2 Samuel 7:10–17). 

David is to understand — and it’s an invaluable lesson for you and me — that God’s gifts to us far outweigh our gifts to him. 

Mark: don’t try to replace God’s gift. God’s preeminent gift, we find in the New Testament, is David’s greater Son. Jesus comes as the Good Shepherd (John 10). In Mark’s gospel, Jesus has shown himself to be that great Davidic shepherd King. With compassion for “sheep without a shepherd” he has taught them (Mark 6:34). And by means of the feeding of the 5,000 and the 4,000, he has shown himself to be the ultimate shepherd who finds green pastures and sets a banquet for his flock (Mark 6:30–44; 8:1–9; see Psalm 23). King Jesus is simultaneously Good Shepherd and Bread from Heaven. 

Believing that Jesus is heaven’s gift and God’s provision for the deepest needs of our life is not an easy thing. Despite just witnessing these two powerful miracles in Mark, and despite listening to the accompanying extensive teaching in John, Jesus’s disciples still don’t get it. On a boat journey recounted for us in today’s reading, the disciples panic to realize they have forgotten to make adequate provision for themselves. They’ve only brought one loaf of bread. 

Jesus sees a teaching opportunity: “Watch out—beware of the yeast of the Pharisees and the yeast of Herod” (Mark 8:15). Jesus and Jesus alone is Bread of Life. On the one hand, Jesus warns those in the boat with him against a graceless piety like that of the Pharisees — those who attempt to climb a stairway to heaven by stiff-necked rule-keeping. On the other hand, Jesus warns his disciples against a secular worldliness like that of the Herodians — those who make peace with the earthly powers-that-be and live as lavish a life as possible. 

I pray we may look past the allures of anything else, whether the pride of hyper-spirituality or the sloth of materialism, and graciously receive God’s gift of himself in his Son. May we feed richly on the Bread of Life. 

Be blessed this day, 

Reggie Kidd+

Image: "Doh, I knew I forgot something!" by THX0477 is licensed under CC BY 2.0

David is Finally King as Promised - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Friday • 7/30/2021
Friday of the Ninth Week After Pentecost (Proper 12)

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 69; 2 Samuel 5:1–12; Acts 17:1–15; Mark 7:24–37

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)

---

2 Samuel and David’s elevation. At this his third anointing David (finally) becomes king over God’s united people. Samuel first anointed him in promise (1 Samuel 16). Judah anointed him as king in the south (2 Samuel 2). Now “all the tribes of Israel (the northern tribes) came to David … and said, … ‘The Lord said to you: It is you who shall be shepherd of my people Israel, you who shall be ruler over Israel’” (2 Samuel 5:1–2). The leaders of the northern tribes make a covenant with David, “and they anointed David king over Israel” (2 Samuel 5:3).

The next few chapters of 2 Samuel recount the measures by which David’s reign is secured. David wins Jerusalem as capital and center of worship (2 Samuel 5:6–6:23). Yahweh promises an everlasting dynasty (2 Samuel 7). And David suppresses attacks by Edom, Moab, Ammon, Philistia, Amalek, and Zobah (2 Samuel 8–10). 

It’s been a long and winding road, as Paul McCartney might have put it: from shepherding on the family homestead, to receiving Samuel’s promissory anointing, to taking out Goliath, to singing to soothe Saul’s soul, to bonding with Jonathan, to running from Saul, to receiving Judah’s anointing, to lamenting Saul’s demise, and now to being anointed by Israel as king over a united nation. David’s life takes on the cruciform shape the New Testament describes for the Lord’s anointed, his Messiah: “…it was necessary for the Messiah to suffer and to rise from the dead” (Acts 17:3; and see also Luke 24:26; 1 Peter 1:11). 

Today’s Psalm 69, “A psalm of David,” is a reminder of just how aware David himself was of the way Yahweh had called him to this pattern of life. This psalm is also a reminder to us of how David sang and worshiped and prayed his way through it all — and how, in worship, the Lord gave him glimpses of the greater Son who would follow (see verse 23, below)! 

1 Save me, O God, *
for the waters have risen up to my neck.
2 I am sinking in deep mire, *
and there is no firm ground for my feet.
3 I have come into deep waters, *
and the torrent washes over me.

13 Those who sit at the gate murmur against me, *
and the drunkards make songs about me.
14 But as for me, this is my prayer to you, *
at the time you have set, O Lord:
15 “In your great mercy, O God, *
answer me with your unfailing help.
16 Save me from the mire; do not let me sink; *
let me be rescued from those who hate me
and out of the deep waters….”

23 They gave me gall to eat, *
and when I was thirsty, they gave me vinegar to drink.

31 As for me, I am afflicted and in pain; *
your help, O God, will lift me up on high.
32 I will praise the Name of God in song; *
I will proclaim his greatness with thanksgiving.
33 This will please the Lord more than an offering of oxen, *
more than bullocks with horns and hoofs.
34 The afflicted shall see and be glad; *
you who seek God, your heart shall live.
35 For the Lord listens to the needy, *
and his prisoners he does not despise.
36 Let the heavens and the earth praise him, *
the seas and all that moves in them;
37 For God will save Zion and rebuild the cities of Judah; *
they shall live there and have it in possession.
38 The children of his servants will inherit it, *
and those who love his Name will dwell therein.

Each of us is offered our share in “the fellowship of his sufferings,” in promise of “the power of his resurrection” (Philippians 3:10). The privilege, in a word, is to join David  in being formed in the likeness of his greater Son, and in singing, praying, and worshiping our way through it all.  

Be blessed this day,

Reggie Kidd+

Image: "King David Statue-4" by zeevveez is licensed under CC BY 2.0