A Fourth Vision of Hope - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Wednesday • 12/15/2021
Wednesday of the Third Week of Advent

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 119:49–72; Zechariah 3:1–10; Revelation 4:1–8; Matthew 24:45–51

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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Zechariah receives a fourth nighttime vision of hope. “Then he showed me the high priest Joshua standing before the angel of the Lord, and Satan standing at his right hand to accuse him. And the Lord said to Satan, ‘The Lord rebuke you, O Satan!’” (Zechariah 3:1). Satan the accuser’s accusations mean nothing when the Lord steps in. Despite the complicity of the priesthood in Israel’s guilt, Yahweh intends to bring purity back into worship. 

Symbolic of the guilt of past priests, Joshua the high priest appears at first with filthy garments. The LORD removes them and replaces them: “See, I have taken your guilt away from you, and I will clothe you with festal apparel” (Zechariah 3:5). 

Yahweh knows that this can be but a partial measure, because every priest, including this Joshua, is a sinner, and can offer only tainted offerings. Thus, Yahweh promises a better Priest. He informs Joshua that he and his colleagues “are an omen of things to come; I am going to bring my servant the Branch” (Zechariah 3:8b). Through that branch, Yahweh promises to “remove the guilt of this land in a single day” (Zechariah 3:9b). 

In Jesus Christ, that Branch has come. In his obedient life and in his sacrifice on the cross, Jesus Christ has removed the guilt of the whole earth “in a single day.” Praise be!

Revelation 4 (again)! A few weeks ago, the Daily Office Lectionary took us up to the Sunday of Christ the King (the culmination of the Christian Year) by telling us the destiny of two women, the Harlot of Babylon and the Bride of Christ (Revelation 12–22). History concludes with the separate destinies of these two. As part of the preface for that narrative, the Lectionary took us back to Revelation 4 and its throne room scene. 

Here in Advent at the beginning of a new Christian Year, the Lectionary has taken us through Revelation’s letters to the seven churches (Revelation 2–3). These letters are portals into the various travails and victories of the church—the Bride in Waiting— through the ages. Appropriately, after inviting us to read those letters, the Lectionary revisits the throne room scene. We need to be reminded of the glory that stands above us in the midst of our struggles here below. 

Things said a month ago are worth saying again: 

Now, with Chapter 4, the Lord begins to pull back the curtain that, for now at least, separates earth and heaven. He shows John (and us) what’s going on behind the scenes: “…and there in heaven a door stood open!” (Revelation 4:11b). In his vision, John is taken, in the first place, to the throne room, where the Creator of heaven and earth still governs. Here, God the Father sits on a throne in a setting redolent with colors of the rainbow—his symbol that he is both creator and preserver of his good creation (Revelation 4:3). 

Worship ascends to the Father from all of creation: from wild animal life (the lion), from domesticated creatures (the ox), from the birds of the air (the eagle), and from humanity (the human face—Revelation 4:6b). Twenty-four elders (Israel’s twelve tribes and Jesus’s twelve disciples) represent the full sweep of the biblical story, humanity’s true history and destiny. Each of the twenty-four has his own throne and crown. In humble adoration, each lays his crown at the feet of God. 

Week after week, the struggling church here below accepts the liturgy’s invitation to join this heavenly chorus in their unending song, “Holy, holy, holy, the Lord God the Almighty, who was and is and is to come” (Revelation 4:8b). Their song is our song as well. For when we sing, with them, of the worth of our Lord and God, we re-center our lives around the fact that reality is thicker than what we can perceive with our senses.

Matthew: how shall we then live? I borrow this sub-heading from a book that Francis Schaeffer and C. Everett Koop co-wrote in the mid-1970s, surveying the challenge that believers face in advocating for life in a death culture. Jesus intends his sobering parable about an abusive household steward, I think, to make us draw back in horror, and say “May it never be!” 

We have been so loved that Christ gave his life as a sacrifice for our sins (Matthew 26:28—the ultimate fulfillment of God’s promise to remove Joshua the high priest’s filthy clothes!). Christ has promised us his very presence each and every day (Matthew 18:20; 28:20). Christ has promised us a place in the coming renewal of all things: “Truly I tell you, at the renewal of all things, when the Son of Man is seated on the throne of his glory, you who have followed me will also sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel” (Matthew 19:28). 

The very thought that we who are beneficiaries of such great gifts and have been entrusted with such a high calling should live abusive and self-indulgent lives — a horrific thought! How should we then live, indeed? Well, that’s largely what Matthew’s glorious gospel is all about, beginning with, “Blessed are the poor in spirit,” and running all the way through, “Teaching them all that I have commanded you” (Matthew 5:3; 28:20). That is who we are! 

And that is why our keynote prayer in Advent is: Almighty God, give us grace to cast away the works of darkness, and put on the armor of light, now in the time of this mortal life in which your Son Jesus Christ came to visit us in great humility; that in the last day, when he shall come again in his glorious majesty to judge both the living and the dead, we may rise to the life immortal; through him who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

Be blessed this day,

Reggie Kidd+ 

Image: "O Radix Iesse" by Lawrence OP is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 

"Most Freaking Awesome!" - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Tuesday • 12/14/2021
Tuesday of the Third Week of Advent, Year Two 

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 45; Zechariah 2:1–13; Revelation 3:14–22; Matthew 24:12–44

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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Laodicea: a warning, a knock, a promise

A sobering warning. “I am about to spit you out of my mouth” (Revelation 3:15). The Book of Revelation’s Laodicea was a thriving city in west central Asia Minor, noted for its banking, medical school, and clothing industry. Christians there fit right in, thinking of themselves as wealthy and healthy; and they dressed the part. The angel of the Lord would have them understand otherwise: “[Y]ou say, ‘I am rich, I have prospered, and I need nothing.’ You do not realize that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked” (Revelation 3:17). 

Laodicea happened to be situated in a valley within eyesight of two other cities: Hierapolis, up on a nearby bluff, and Colosse (really more a small town) down in the same valley as Laodicea. Hierapolis was home to medicinal hot springs, from which Laodicea’s water was piped in. Naturally, by the time that water got to Laodicea, it was tepid in temperature. It no longer had the medicinal value attributed to it at its source. Nor was it refreshingly cool like the spring that supplied water to nearby Colosse. Laodicea’s water either had to be reheated for some purposes, or allowed to cool for other purposes. As it was, it was good for nothing. “I know your works; you are neither cold nor hot. I wish that you were either cold or hot.  So, because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I am about to spit you out of my mouth” (Revelation 3:15–16). Be healingly hot or appetizingly cold, writes the angel, but not uselessly neither/nor! 

A gracious and persistent knock on the door. “Listen! I am standing at the door, knocking; if you hear my voice and open the door, I will come in to you and eat with you, and you with me” (Revelation 3:20). The sobering thing about this verse is that it is addressed to people already inside the church. Somehow, the Laodicean Christians, with all their wealth and sense of well-being, had managed to lock him out! Yikes!!

I recall the sense of moral superiority that my Reformed teachers had in pointing out that evangelists who used this passage to appeal to non-Christians were taking it out of context. John, they rightly pointed out, doesn’t have a vision of Christ almost pathetically pleading with the unbeliever to let him in. 

But, I repeat, Yikes! In context, the vision is even more ominous than that. It’s a picture of Christ having been shut out of his own house, and now trying to get back in! That concerns me week after week as I show up at church to lead worship. Dear Lord, don’t let us lock the door on you! May we never let ourselves slide into a smug sense of superiority, so that we cannot feel the warmth of your passion for the lost or lose the wonder of the freshness of your presence. May we never become so content with our possessions, our sense of well-being, our being so well put together, that you become a mere chaplain to our religion of self. 

Until today’s wrestling with this passage, I had never thought to keep reading. I guess I was so struck by the strong warnings that I failed to see the promise that follows. 

An astounding promise. “To the one who conquers (Greek, nikān, from which comes the name of the company Nike) I will give a place with me on my throne, just as I myself conquered and sat down with my Father on his throne” (Revelation 3:21). Here’s the very One who, at the beginning of the letter to the Laodiceans, names himself “the Amen, the Faithful and True Witness, the very Origin of God’s creation.” Here he is saying to those of us who can stir our hearts out of lukewarmness, who will come to him for riches, who will humble ourselves to wear white robes of his gifting, and who will admit that our blindness must be healed by the oil of his anointing (Revelation 3:18)—he is saying that if we do these things, he will consider us overcomers, victors, and conquerors. We won’t be wearing the Nike swoosh on our tee shirts. We ourselves will be walking and talking Nike swooshes. 

Not only that, but to us who have overcome, he will say, “Here, sit next to me. Share my rule and reign!” Un-freaking-believable. In fact, the early church coined a word for something like this: phrikodestatēs, or, in the vernacular, “most freakin’g awesome!” 

So, this Advent season, I pray that you and I refuse to succumb to the laze of lukewarmness, and that we determine not to lock the door on the overtures of our Savior. But, rather, that we dare to believe that the extraordinary goal of his incarnation is to raise us up to royalty, and not just any royalty, but a share in his own! 

Be blessed this day,

Reggie Kidd+

Image: iStock photo

Words of Comfort, Visions of Hope - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Monday • 12/13/2021

Monday of the Third Week of Advent, Year Two 

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 41; Psalm 52; Zechariah 1:7–17; Revelation 3:7–13; Matthew 24:15–31

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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 Zechariah: words of comfort and visions of hope

A student discovers she is going to have to retake a course because, well, things didn’t go swimmingly the first time around. Her teacher says, “I’m proud of your resilience. I know you’ll get it this time.” A church worker is fired, and he is deep in a “slough of despond.” A friend shows up at his home and says, “I’m sorry nobody was there to speak up for you, but I’m here for you now. And, you know what? You’re going to be OK.” 

After a dark night of the soul, words of comfort and a vision of hope—they mean the world. 

The happy task of the prophet Zechariah (whose name means “Yah remembers”) is to speak words of comfort and to offer visions of hope to dejected, disheartened, and drained returnees from the 70 year long Babylonian Captivity. The task before them is monumental: to rebuild Jerusalem and its fallen temple, to restore vibrant and sacrificial worship, and to renew Israel’s calling to model for the world how justice, mercy, truth, and love can govern life. 

In the course of one night in 520 B.C. some five months after Jerusalemites have begun to rebuild their city wall, Zechariah receives eight visions of hope for his discouraged fellow countrymen. 

Today’s reading in Zechariah recounts the first of those visions. Angels on horseback appear to him, offering a message of hope from God: “Then the LORD replied with gracious and comforting words to the angel who talked with me” (Zechariah 1:13). Yahweh wants his people to know three things. 

Yahweh is still the God of mercy. Despite allowing his people to endure the consequences of their covenant-violations, Yahweh has never stopped being who he essentially is: the God of mercy and compassion. I’m reminded of the words of the Prayer of Humble Access: “But thou art the same Lord, whose property is always to have mercy….” Jerusalemites of Zechariah’s day could count on that fact, So can you and I! So can the student taking her course a second time. So can the dismissed church worker. 

Wrongs against God’s people have not gone unnoticed. “I am extremely angry with the nations that are at ease; for while I was only a little angry, they made the disaster worse” (Zechariah 1:15). It is a curious twist in biblical historiography that God weaves nonbelievers into his redemptive designs. Abram and Melchizedek are interlaced in order to demonstrate God’s grace. Even Egypt is a refuge for Israelites from famine, until the imposition of slavery. The Persian king Cyrus is Judah’s “Savior,” because he proclaims release from captivity in Babylonian. 

But God had also employed the mighty, destructive, and terrifying armies of Assyria and Babylon to execute the curses of covenant-violation. However, the violence that Assyria and Babylon unleashed against God’s wayward people far exceeded what God’s justice called for. Yahweh wants his people to know that their innocent and undeserved tears have not gone unnoticed. In his own time and in his own way, Yahweh will balance things out. 

They don’t have to take matters into their own hands. They don’t have to wallow in self-doubt or surrender their souls to self-destructive bitterness. They can leave recompense in the hands of the Divine Enforcer. That truth is as good in our day as it was in the day of the prophet whose name means “Yah remembers.” He remembered then, and he remembers still. 

Prosperity lies in his people’s future. “Thus says the Lord of hosts: My cities shall again overflow with prosperity; the Lord will again comfort Zion and again choose Jerusalem” (Zechariah 1:17). Looking beyond Zechariah, the season of Advent reminds us that we have read to the end of the story, and we know its happy outcome. 

To that end, John records the letter to the beleaguered church in Philadelphia (1st century Asia Minor): “Because you have kept my word of patient endurance, I will keep you from the hour of trial that is coming on the whole world to test the inhabitants of the earth. I am coming soon; hold fast to what you have, so that no one may seize your crown. If you conquer, I will make you a pillar in the temple of my God; you will never go out of it. I will write on you the name of my God, and the name of the city of my God, the new Jerusalem that comes down from my God out of heaven, and my own new name” (Revelation 3:10–12). 

What awaits the members of God’s city is a rich and wonderful future, one that more than offsets the trials, the failures, and the disappointments of this age. May you and I rest in the confidence of that great truth this Advent season, all the while living boldly and without regret, second-guessing, or bitterness. 

Be blessed this day, 

Reggie Kidd+

Image: sculpture: Moriz Schlachter (1852–1931); Photo: Andreas Praefcke, copyright released under GNU Free Documentation License, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Ten Words - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Friday • 12/10/2021

We are taking a detour from the Daily Office readings for a few days. Instead, we are thinking through various facets of worship and how our Lord provides meaningful communion with him through our formal corporate worship as well as in individual worship in our daily devotions. The thoughts offered here are excerpts from articles I wrote for Worship Leader magazine a few years ago.  We’ll resume our reflections on the Daily Office Monday, December 13.

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Ten Words 

The most remarkable worship leader I ever knew didn’t lead singing. He didn’t play an instrument. Robert Webber (1933–2007) was an evangelical theologian who happened to fall in love with ancient liturgy. He held the past in one outstretched arm and the future in the other and proclaimed: “What Christ has joined together, let not the church put asunder.”  

Worship practitioners are also worship theologians. We always implement a theology of worship when we lead. Our job description may put us more or less “in control” of that theology. But most of us have some say in its shaping. Here are “ten words” from Webber – six from his liturgical, and four from his evangelical sensibility – that may serve you in your vision of what worship can be.   

 Doxology. We gather for one thing: to honor God. Worship, of course, includes education and evangelism. It may even be entertaining. But worship is first and last doxological. Thus, it is theocentric, not narcissistic. Worship celebrates Christ as the central cosmic figure of the universe. Worship features God’s story, not our nation’s, not our favorite team’s, not our denominational tribe’s. 

Mystery. If God could be figured out or if he could be understood in his entirety, he wouldn’t be God. Sometimes he’s more real in his silence than in our answers. Some things get killed when they are over-explained. They just have to be allowed to be – to be experienced, not parsed. 

Incarnation. But God hasn’t left us in mystified befuddlement. He came in the very flesh of what we are. Jesus came as one of us, in order to redeem a creation God had made to be “good.” He reclaimed the world for God, so we tend it. He re-appropriated time, so we reshape it: B.C. and A.D. 

Sacraments. Christ meets us as material beings in material stuff. We’re not just dust. We’re not just spirit. We’re unified beings: dust that God has breathed into. We have ears to hear. Hands to raise. We have knees to kneel. Lips to drink, tongues to taste, noses to smell.

History. This is the “Be true to your school” principle (via the Beach Boys). No matter how our church got its name (e.g., such-and-such saint, such-and-such street, such-and-such one word), every church came from somewhere. And we can help it be the best St. Matthew’s or Delaney Street or Cornerstone or whatever. 

Catholicity. This is the complementary principle that comes from St. Vincent of Lérins: “What has been believed everywhere, always, and by all.” Before there was a Reformation with its Confessions, Revivals with their sawdust trails, the Jesus Movement with its “New Song,” or Emergence with its eclecticism, there was a Great Church that gave us the Creeds and a remarkably common pattern of worship. 

Orthodoxy. Life is at stake in our holding forth true theological truths. It matters that there is one God in three persons (one hope for humanity because of the eternal community of love). It matters that Jesus is truly God and truly man (he has the authority to forgive and the nearness to heal). It matters that his work saves from the guilt of sin, from the despair of death, from the lovelessness of loneliness. 

Scripture. Evangelicals embrace Scripture as a non-negotiable formal principle. Wisely, we refuse the serpent’s hiss: “Hath God really said?” At the same time, the classical liturgy is Scripture-saturated and Scripture-shaped in ways that evangelical worship often is not (even if too many in liturgical churches are reluctant to confess the Bible’s absolute authority). How powerful it is when evangelical and liturgical sensibilities merge. 

Conversion. Each person matters. The actual faith of individual worshipers matters. It doesn’t matter how “cool” the ad-libbed prayer. It doesn’t matter how profound the historical litany. Neither means anything apart from regenerate hearts and personal faith. Worship tells God’s story so new characters can take their place in the storyline. 

Mission. The Spirit who raised Jesus from the dead and indwells us impels us into the world in mission. The worshiping church is neither a museum of quaint antiquities nor a mall of religious exotica. It’s an Ark, says St. Augustine, a place that offers refuge to sojourners “in this wicked world as in a deluge.” Into its walls of safety the one Righteous Man draws those who otherwise would drown, and then makes them co-heralds of his victory over sin and death, his Father’s love for sinners still outside, and the Spirit’s power to rescue them as well. 

Be blessed this day, 

Reggie Kidd+

Image:  Cathedral Church of St. Luke, Orlando, Florida (adaptation of Theo Gordon photo)

Be Still - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Thursday • 12/9/2021

We are taking a detour from the Daily Office readings for a few days. Instead, we are thinking through various facets of worship and how our Lord provides meaningful communion with him through our formal corporate worship as well as in individual worship in our daily devotions. The thoughts offered here are excerpts from articles I wrote for Worship Leader magazine a few years ago.  We’ll resume our reflections on the Daily Office Monday, December 13.

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.Be Still 

“Mr. Kidd, your mom’s heart is pumping blood as if she was 20 years old, not 91,” explains the ER doctor.

Flabbergasted, I reply, “OK, so why’s she in the ER?”

“She has congestive heart failure. (Pause, apparently taking in the blank look on my face.) Your heart has to have a constricting strength to pump blood out. She’s got plenty of that. But your heart also has to have an expanding strength to receive blood. Your mom’s heart is losing that ability. If the heart can’t relax and expand, blood can’t enter, and fluid gets backed up in the body. Eventually the congestion will take her out and cause her death. All we can do is manage things until that happens. I’m sorry.”

Several months later my mom’s congestive heart failure was indeed being managed … for the time being. She was doing well, even if, as she said, “Getting old will either make you tough or kill you!”

Heart Health

My mom’s particular heart ailment – power-to-pump-out-but-not-to-take-in – had given me pause, though. I think of my laundry-list prayer life, and of my affection for non-stop, high-octane, über-decibel worship. Of all the pressures I feel to be producing, conducting, crafting, designing, tweaking, critiquing, supervising, and leading worship. I wonder about my spiritual heart-health – and that of those I’m leading. 

Shortly after my mom’s hospital stay, the Robert. E. Webber Institute for Worship Studies, where I teach, was in session. I’m accustomed to Chaplain Darrell Harris leading our morning devotions with unusual spiritual perceptivity. But one morning I was caught unawares. 

I can’t go into detail – but let’s just say I was mired in some inner conflict. So, I’m pouring myself into the praise and prayer, looking to “worship” my way out of the funk. After his message Darrell says, “We go now to a period of silence. By silence, I mean silence. I don’t mean silent prayer. I don’t mean silent meditation on Scripture. I don’t mean rehearse your day’s schedule. I mean: be still. Be quiet, and just listen.” 

We knelt, and sang a lovely setting of “Be Still” (from Psalm 46:10a) that Darrell and Eric Wyse had written. 

Take in

Then the silence set in – glorious quiet, healing peace, grace-filled silence. I felt my heart relax and expand. I felt Spirit entering. I felt conflict flee. When, after a few minutes passed, we rose to sing “The Lord’s Prayer” (Eric Wyse’s version is sort of an IWS anthem) I rose a different person. 

In that moment I realized why the ancients revered silence, why many sought the desert, wanting to hear a voice the city drowned out. They knew the vision of God was a “Well, shut my mouth!” sort of affair: “The Lord is in his holy temple, let all the earth be silent before him” (Hab 2:20). They noticed that in Scripture some visions demand modesty of expression: “Do not write this down” (Rev 10:4). They observed that even in heaven itself when something big is about to happen, silence may be what the moment requires: “When the Lamb opened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven for about a half an hour” (Rev 8:1). They perceived that, like Job, if you get the audience you wish for with God you just may have to say: “I lay my hand on my mouth” (Job 40:4-5). 

Worship needs the same sort of rhythm our hearts require. Pump out: “I lift my hands in praise, for you are majestic and mighty and worthy of honor.” Take in: “You are merciful and tender of heart, and yet unsearchable in your judgments and inscrutable in your ways – and so I bow and wait and listen in silence.”  

Be blessed this day, 

Reggie Kidd+ 

Image: Fra Angelico , Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

We Tell Time by Christ - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Wednesday • 12/8/2021

We are taking a detour from the Daily Office readings for a few days. Instead, we are thinking through various facets of worship and how our Lord provides meaningful communion with him through our formal corporate worship as well as in individual worship in our daily devotions. The thoughts offered here are excerpts from articles I wrote for Worship Leader magazine a few years ago.  We’ll resume our reflections on the Daily Office Monday, December 13.

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Telling Time by Jesus

Roger wears two watches. Because he travels a lot, he sets the watch on his left wrist to whatever time zone he happens to be in. He sets the watch on his right wrist to the time zone “back home” in Switzerland, where his heart always is and where his family lives. 

Stability on the right wrist gives him equilibrium for all the changes on his left. 

Lost in Time

A church is like a person whose left wrist is lined with watches that demand we keep up with different “time zones” all at the same time. There’s church programming for the fall. There’s Christmas ramp-up. There’s the first of the year blues. There’s Easter ramp-up. There’s the summer doldrums. There’s always some sports season time that affects people’s attendance and attention span (are we on NFL, NBA, or MLB time?). There’s “Hallmark” time (Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, Memorial Day, Independence Day). 

God gave Israel a pattern of life, from the beginning of the year at Rosh Hashanah. Thus he taught her to number her days according to his provision for spiritual and physical life. The church understood – and so Paul taught them – not to come under the calendar as law (see Gal. 4:10). Nonetheless, the church also understood – and so Paul also taught them – that Christ has brought “the fullness of time,” the time of “new creation” (Gal 4:7; 6:15). 

Christ Our Measure

Over time, the church sensed that we needed to “name” the time that God had “claimed.” And so over the first several centuries of the church a fairly wide consensus emerged that we would order our days according to the life of Jesus Christ. 

The Christian New Year begins with Advent, the four Sundays before Christmas when we anticipate the incarnation of our Lord. We rehearse the OT promises and the annunciation to Mary. We remember that Christ has come, and we celebrate the fact that Christ does come now in our lives and will come again at the end of the age. 

Celebrate

From December 25 and for the next 12 days (the original “12 Days of Christmas”) we rejoice in his birth. We exult at the fact that Christ’s incarnation is the beginning of the destruction of all that is evil. 

From January 6 up until Ash Wednesday, we celebrate Epiphany, the “Manifestation” of Christ in his mission to become Lord of the whole world. Here, worship focuses on Christ’s baptism, his turning water into wine, his teaching, healing, and preaching – and his transfiguration as he prepares to journey to Jerusalem. 

Reflection, Fasting and Prayer

Beginning on Ash Wednesday, in anticipation of Easter we spend 40 days considering the call of the cross, a season called Lent. Lent climaxes with Holy Week: Palm Sunday, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Holy Saturday (concluding with the best kept secret of the Christian year, the Great Easter Vigil). 

Easter is more than a day – it’s a season, running from Easter Sunday to Pentecost Sunday, fifty days later: 6 weeks of Easter! While many modern churches put more of their energy into celebrating Christmas, the ancient church highlighted Easter. Christ lives, and so shall we! During the Easter season, worship emphasizes Christ’s post-resurrection appearances and teachings. 

The Great Mission

From fifty days after Easter to the first Sunday in Advent (almost half the calendar year!) we celebrate Pentecost and the pouring out of the Holy Spirit. At Pentecost in Jerusalem, the Holy Spirit reversed the curse of Babel and launched the church’s mission to the nations. The extended Pentecost season gives us ample opportunity to reflect on our place in that great mission. 

In the Christian calendar, the church offers a timepiece for the “right wrist” that anchors us in the “back home” of God and his story. We’re not just passing time according to the secular calendar or sports seasons or greeting cards. We are defined by our relationship with Christ, and he is the one by whom we tell time. 

Be blessed this day, 

Reggie Kidd+

Image: Image: from "My 2006 March Madness picks" by jakebouma is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0; "Happy 4th of July! The American Flag in Fireworks" by Beverly & Pack is marked with CC PDM 1.0; Arturo Pardavila III from Hoboken, NJ, USA, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons; Super Bowl image – public domain

Singing the Faith Binds Us Together - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Tuesday • 12/7/2021

We are taking a detour from the Daily Office readings for a few days. Instead, we are thinking through various facets of worship and how our Lord provides meaningful communion with him through our formal corporate worship as well as in individual worship in our daily devotions. The thoughts offered here are excerpts from articles I wrote for Worship Leader magazine a few years ago.  We’ll resume our reflections on the Daily Office Monday, December 13.

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Singing the “Symbol”

“So say we all!” began as a fortunate ad lib by actor Edward James Olmos in his role as Commander Adama during a rally-the-troops speech in Syfy’s series Battlestar Galactica. The line became a communal ceremonial affirmation of humans in their battle against the genocidal Cylons and in their galaxy-wide quest for a new homeland. Whenever I’d hear members of the Colonial Fleet raise the shout on their way to fight the Cylons, I’d recall from the book of Exodus the gathering on Mount Horeb. There, God’s people heard God’s Word and twice roared, “All that the Lord has said, we will do!” as they prepared for the covenantal sacrificial act and the meal by which God and his people bound their lives to one another (Exodus 24:1-11).  

Singing: Bridge and Invitation

I have come to love many features of worship with friends who emulate early Christian worship. No feature more so than the way we bridge from the ministry of the Word to the ministry of the Table. Having heard the Word read and proclaimed, we use the Nicene Creed to voice our “So say we all!” Then, and only then, are we ready to pray for the needs of the world and to break bread in the presence of our God and King. Placed right there, the Creed invites us to “re-enlist” in a cause that is more momentous than war against mere cybernetic enemies and in a quest that is also more assured than Adama’s for a New Earth. 

The Presbyterian church of my upbringing taught the baptismal creed: the Apostles’ Creed. But my Episcopal/Anglican friends use the church’s Eucharistic creed: the Nicene Creed. It spells out in greater detail the significance of Christ’s incarnation: that he who “for us and for our salvation came down from heaven and became incarnate” is “true God from true God.” 

The Nicene Creed came to be called “The Symbol of the Faith.” It stood as the best summary of the truths for which Christians had to contend during the first half-millennium of the church’s existence (issues which have only become more urgent in the 21st century): the Savior had the authority to save because he was divine, and the ability to do so because he had become one of us. 

Power of Song

What is not often appreciated is that for centuries (emerging as custom probably in the 4th century and becoming a matter of decree with Charlemagne in the 9th), it was normal for the Creed to be sung as part of the worship service. Because it was not merely recited, but sung, the Creed took on the features of a “national anthem” for citizens of the Kingdom of Heaven. These days, ordinarily when Protestants use the Nicene Creed, they simply recite it. Maybe that’s a loss (though on festival days at the Cathedral Church of St. Luke in Orlando, we chant the Creed in monotone, accompanied by improvisation on the organ). 

Intrigued by the idea of singing it, and also because it’s embarrassing for me to have to read the Creed while all the cradle-to-grave Episcopalians around me say it from memory, I came upon plainsong chant versions in the hymnal, one in a minor key that feels a little like “O the Deep, Deep Love of Jesus,” and one in a major key that feels a lot like “Of the Father’s Love Begotten.”* 

Three surprises: 1) how easy it has been to memorize the text as song; 2) how differently the two tunes nuance the text; 3) and most importantly, how having the chanted Creed in my being makes its truth sing in my soul. 

Many Songs, One Voice

There are many ways to declare the faith in worship, from Martin Luther’s “A Mighty Fortress,” to Graham Kendrick’s “We Believe,” to the simplest affirmations of God’s goodness, like Darrell Evans’ “Trading My Sorrow” (“Yes, Lord, yes, Lord, yes, yes, Lord, Amen!”). We all have different settings … and different souls. 

For all of us, though, there’s a power in how singing the faith anchors truth in us, augmenting what we know, re-focusing what we read, and shaping what we practice. There’s a Presence in how singing the faith binds us together, making us both His and one another’s. “So say we all!”

Be blessed this day, 

Reggie Kidd+

* Respectively, S 103 in the Episcopalian Hymnal 1982, and S 361 in the Hymnal 1982 Accompaniment Edition.

Not a "Drive-by" Salvation - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Monday • 12/6/2021

We are taking a detour from the Daily Office readings for a few days. Instead, we are thinking through various facets of worship and how our Lord provides meaningful communion with him through our formal corporate worship as well as in individual worship in our daily devotions. The thoughts offered here are excerpts from articles I wrote for Worship Leader magazine a few years ago.  We’ll resume our reflections on the Daily Office Monday, December 13.

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Mystery Matters

Ahmed: Our religions are the same. You call him Elohim and I call him Allah. Both words mean the same thing: “God.” We both believe Jesus is God’s Son and was born of a virgin. We both believe he will come again at the end of time.

Me: But do you worship Jesus, Ahmed? 

Ahmed: Of course not, that would be blasphemy! The Son is not the same as Allah. 

Me: Then, no, friend, our religions are not the same. 

In my conversation with Ahmed, I realized how easy Christianity’s “sell” would be if we could just accept the logic that if there is one and only one God, then Father, Son, and Holy Spirit can’t each be God. 

The church of the first half-millennium bequeathed to us a fabulous gift: their stubborn refusal to surrender the lessons they had learned from Scripture and in worship to other voices.

One voice said: “Just put Jesus a little below the Father and as high above us as we wish. Make Jesus a fellow creature with us, one through whom we worship, but not one to whom we offer worship.” 

Its opposite said: “Elevate Jesus so far above us that he becomes just a ‘face’ that God condescends to use to communicate with us without dragging him down to a material existence.”Make Jesus less than fully divine or less than fully human. Either way, he becomes more plausible, more understandable … more, well, marketable. 

If early Christians had accepted either of these options – the one at the hands of Arians, the other at the hands of Gnostics – the church could have known early, easy success. 

As it is, though, Scripture told our spiritual forebears that “the Word became flesh.” Worship taught them both sides of the equation: THE WORD became flesh, and the Word BECAME FLESH. 

THE WORD: Only God Can Save

Scripture teaches truths that worship shapes into habits of the heart. One is that only God can save. Even Jesus’ enemies recognized that statements like “Rise, your sins are forgiven” were claims to deity. John the Baptist declared Jesus to be “the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.” Instinctively, the church has translated that statement into prayer: “Lamb of God, you take away the sin of the world, have mercy on us.” 

Early Christians cultivated the habit of praying to Jesus: “You are seated at the right hand of the Father. Receive our prayer. You alone are the Holy One, you alone are the Lord, you alone are the Most High, Jesus Christ, with the Holy Spirit, in the glory of God the Father. Amen.” Thus, they insulated themselves from claims that the Word is less than fully divine. 

Most of us live in a cultural environment in which Jesus is considered a great man, perhaps larger than life, maybe even semi-divine. But not GOD. However, if he is not God, then he doesn’t really save. We’re left to try to save ourselves, however we define salvation. The greatest thing we can offer our secularist friends, our Muslim friends, our Jehovah’s Witness friends, is to worship not some generic “Lord,” but the distinctly Trinitarian God. This is the God who redeems – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  

BECAME FLESH: Not a “Drive by”

To some people, it seemed (and still seems) unworthy of God to think of him actually becoming human. So they sought (and seek) to protect the purity of God by having a fully divine Christ, but one who sort of passed through Mary rather than took substance from her. Jesus’ humanity disappears, or at least withers. Unfortunately then, so does ours. 

Most Christians, however, understand that since our problem – sin – includes body, mind, soul, and spirit, so does our solution. To heal us and rescue us, Jesus had to become one of us. The incarnation was not a “drive by” salvation. Jesus has come, and is coming, in the flesh (compare 1 John 2:26 & 2 John 7). Thus, we look for new bodies, not angels’ wings. 

That’s why “matter matters” in worship. Baptismal waters are simultaneously “our tomb” (the death of the “old man”) and “our mother” (the birth of the “new man”), as Cyril, Jerusalem’s 4th century bishop put it. Anointing with oil at baptism (Greek: chrisma) makes us little “Christs.” Just as Jesus turned water into wine then, he now turns wine into blood, so that in Communion “we become one body and blood with Christ. In this way we become Christ-bearers (a Greek word from which comes the name ‘Christopher’) as his body and blood are spread around our limbs.” Thus, the kiss of peace at Communion is not just any old greeting, but an expression of “a union of souls.”*

Here’s what I wish I had thought to say to Ahmed: The difference in our religions is a mystery you more experience in worship than figure out in your head. We worship Jesus because it’s the Son’s divinity that gives him the right to forgive. And we worship alongside Jesus because the Son has become our brother and made his Father ours. 

Be blessed this day,

Reggie Kidd+

* References in Cyril are to his Mystagogic Catecheses 2.4; 3.1; 4.3; 5.3, in Lester Ruth, et al., Walking Where Jesus Walked: Worship in Fourth-Century Jerusalem (Eerdmans, 2010). 

Image: The Infant Jesus, oil on canvas, attributed to “Old Master,” Italian,  17th century

Spiritual Soulmates - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Friday • 12/3/2021
Friday of the First Week of Advent 

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 16; Psalm 17; Amos 5:1–17; Jude 1–25 (includes Saturday); Matthew 22:1–14

I plan to treat Matthew 22:1–14 in a DDD this coming January. 

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 meditation on Jude and 2 Peter

I grew up going to school with identical twins. We were 10 years old when we were in the same 4th grade class. At first John and Greg were indistinguishable to me. I had to take note each day of who was wearing what. By the time we were seniors in high school, I could never confuse John’s biting wit with Greg’s incisive analytics. And by then, even the subtle differences in their faces and the way they carried themselves were obvious to me. 

To me, Jude and Peter are like John and Greg. Jude and Peter are spiritual soulmates, almost identical twins in the faith. Jude’s letter and Peter’s 2nd letter bear so many resemblances that most scholars think there’s literary dependence between them (the consensus is that 2 Peter used Jude). I’m more inclined to think that the similarities have to do with their personal relationship with each other, their common relationship to their Master (who happens to be Jude’s half-brother), a common pastoral challenge, and a common theological wiring. 

Jude and 2 Peter deal with the same problem: people inside the church who bloviate meaninglessly to mask ethical mischief. In Jude’s words, “they indulge their own lusts; they are bombastic in speech” (Jude 16). And in Peter’s words “they speak bombastic nonsense, and with licentious lusts of the flesh they entice people…” (2 Peter 2:18—my adjustment of NRSV to show the parallels). Both apostles are dealing with people trapped in what later theologians would call libido dominandi, domination by desire. 

For Peter, the antidote is to let God’s life take root in us. God implants his own character within us and empowers us to nurture it: “His divine power has given us everything needed for life and godliness … so that … you may become participants of the divine nature” (2 Peter 1:3–4). God has imparted what western theologians call his “communicable attributes” to us. He does so to empower us from within, that we may recognize narcissistic, manipulative, high-sounding baloney, and show ourselves free from sin’s domination (compare 2 Peter 2:19). 

For Jude, the antidote is to stand on the truth of the Scriptures. God gives us in his Word a firm foundation for our lives: “I find it necessary to write and appeal to you to contend for the faith that was once for all entrusted to the saints” (Jude 4). Jude’s message to us is: stay true to that story, ponder its lessons, and you’ll be OK. 

In a cascade of events in Israel’s history, Jude illustrates the principle that to step away from the “faith once entrusted to the saints” is to reap a bitter harvest. He draws lessons from the exodus generation’s lack of faith, the fallen angels’ rejection of God’s authority, Sodom and Gomorrah’s immorality and lust, Cain’s jealousy, Balaam’s error, and Korah’s rebellion. 

Those who say otherwise, Jude contends, who insist that we are free to improvise, are like clouds that promise rain, but prove to be a tease (Jude 12). They turn grace into license (Jude 4), but cannot deliver the joy and the freedom their license promises. They can only lure us into illusory pleasure and make us over into the same sort of grumblers and malcontents that they are (Jude 16). They feed themselves at our feasts, Jude says, and they flatter us to their own advantage (Jude 12). I wish I could say that the kind of error—more moral than intellectual, though presenting itself as intellectually superior—died in the 1st century. But, alas, it did not. It pervades western churches and seminary classrooms today. 

By contrast, those who hold to “the faith once delivered” and stay “in” the story of God’s redeeming love will find God more than meeting their determined resistance to error and folly. Thus, the beautiful, powerful, and doxological conclusion to Jude’s letter: “Now to him who is able to keep you from falling, and to make you stand without blemish in the presence of his glory with rejoicing, to the only God our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, power, and authority, before all time and now and forever. Amen” (Jude 24–25). That’s a thought worth contemplating and celebrating throughout this Advent season: “…to make you stand in the presence of his glory with rejoicing.” 

Peter directs our attention to the life-transforming process the Lord has set into motion within us. Jude offers us a point of reference outside ourselves: the solid foundation of truth that has been given us in the whole biblical story line. The bottom line of that story is that folly always gets its reward, and so does persevering faith. 

The perspectives of these identical twins in the faith, of course, are complementary. There’s an existential way in which God works within us, and there’s an authoritative way he calls us to hear and obey him. Praise be to him!

Be blessed this day,

Reggie Kidd+

Image: William A. Macis, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Preparing to Feel "at home" in the New Heavens and New Earth - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Thursday • 12/2/2021
Thursday of the First Week of Advent

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 18; Amos 4:6–13; 2 Peter 3:11–18; Matthew 21:33–46

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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Amos: what sort of God? Who would have expected a lowly shepherd and farmer to offer up one of the most exalted and elegant descriptions of God in all the Bible? “For lo, the one who forms the mountains, creates the wind, reveals his thoughts to mortals, makes the morning darkness, and treads on the heights of the earth—the Lord, the God of hosts, is his name!” (Amos 4:13).

Transcendent thoughts!! Stop-you-in-your-tracks thoughts! And to think that at Advent we prepare to welcome this exalted God as one who lowers himself to be born in a manger to form a new people, to reveal his very person to mortals, to turn sin’s darkness to light, and to raise us to the heights of heaven! Amazing stuff!

2 Peter: What sort of people? In historic Christianity, believers have (unlike the “scoffers” of yesterday’s paragraph in 2 Peter) kept a vigilant eye on the distant horizon. We have done so all the better to give ourselves to living fully and well right here and right now. We do so in response to Peter’s probing questions: “Since all these things are to be dissolved in this way, what sort of persons ought you to be in leading lives of holiness and godliness?” (2 Peter 3:11). 

What sort of persons, indeed, are preparing themselves to fit into the garb of resurrection bodies, to be able to breathe the atmosphere of new heavens and new earth, and to feel at home rather than unhappy and out of place there? (Consider that sentence an invitation to read, or to reread, C. S. Lewis’s, The Great Divorce.) 

2 Peter: Hastening the coming… “…waiting for and hastening (Gk: speudein) the coming of the day of God” (2 Peter 3:12). Now there’s an intriguing thought! Can I make the Lord come back faster by the way I live? Peter has just indicated that God’s desire that “all should be saved” is the reason for the “elongation” of history. It’s God’s patience that is holding back the Parousia (Christ’s return) and the consummation of all things. The Lord kindly and patiently waits, allowing the spread of the gospel to work repentance and faith within rebellious human hearts. Peter thinks a corollary is true as well. It would seem that Peter offers a Christian version of the 2nd century Jewish teacher Rabbi Eliezer’s teaching that Israel’s repentance would hasten the coming of redemption.* 

It’s not at all as though the Father’s sovereign will is diminished or that the mystery of the Son’s not knowing his day and hour is erased (Mark 13:32; Matthew 24:36). Rather, it’s a matter of perspective. I offer my own paraphrase of Peter’s thought: “If we are eager for the Lord’s return and for the establishment of final righteousness on a new earth under new heavens, then we should live as though we wanted it sooner rather than later! We should inhabit the peaceability of the Kingdom that is coming.” More amazing stuff!

2 Peter: As our dear brother Paul wrote… Peter’s brief comment about Paul is fraught with meaning. The reference is simple and affectionate, suggestive of how early 2 Peter is (since 2nd and 3rd century references to apostles by contrast are elaborate and over-the-top) and of how kindly Peter regarded Paul. 

After the row between them in Syrian Antioch that Paul recalls in Galatians 2  one might have expected tension between them. But such does not appear to have been the case. Peter supports Paul’s Gentile mission in Acts 15, and 1 Peter is replete with Pauline expressions and evidence of Paul’s influence on Peter’s theology.** 

Not incidentally, while acknowledging that Paul’s letters make for a challenging read, Peter elevates them (and he is the first to do so) to the same level of authority as “the other Scriptures” (2 Peter 3:16d)! In 2 Peter, the “fisher of men” has left us a gem of a letter. How impoverished we would be without it!

Be blessed this day, 

Reggie Kidd+

*In Richard Bauckham, Jude, 2 Peter, Word Biblical Commentary 50 (Word Books, 1983), p. 325). 

**Like Paul, Peter uses the phrase “in Christ” as virtually an adjective for “Christian” (1 Peter 3:16; see Romans 8:1; 2 Corinthians 5:17); like Paul, Peter uses the term “charismata” to refer to spiritual gifts (1 Peter 4:10–12; Romans 12:6; 1 Corinthians 12); like Paul, Peter refers to God building a house for his dwelling where we offer spiritual sacrifices (1 Peter 2:4–10; Romans 12:1–2; Ephesians 2:11–22); Peter’s affirmation of Christ’s substitutionary atonement looks like a crisp summary of Paul’s more extended treatment (1 Peter 3:18; Romans 3:21–26; 5:6–11). 

Image: "Distant Horizons" by Robert Hruzek is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

God Has a Heart - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Wednesday • 12/1/2021
Wednesday of the First Week of Advent

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 119:1–24; Amos 3:12–4:5; 2 Peter 3:1–10; Matthew 21:23–32

The Daily Lectionary reading of 2 Peter for this year (Year One), does not include chapter 2. For observations from 2 Peter 2 from Year Two, see https://tinyurl.com/8cxcddz4 for 2 Peter 2:1–10a, from 12/16/2020; https://tinyurl.com/5ukhhuzk for 2 Peter 2:10b–16, from 12/17/2020; and https://tinyurl.com/375377bm for 2 Peter 2:17–22, from 12/18/2020. 

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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2 Peter: of “scoffers with scoffing” 

Even though the New Testament is not beset with having to explain the so-called “failure of the Parousia (the return of Christ)” as some people think, it is wonderful to see Peter taking a good sidelong glance at early purveyors of that wrongheaded notion. At 2 Peter 3:3, he calls them “scoffers with scoffing.”

The “scoffers” have an ethical agenda. “…[I]n the last days scoffers will come, scoffing and indulging their own lusts…” (2 Peter 3:3). The scoffers deliberately suppress truth, says Peter (2 Peter 3:5), because they don’t want certain things to be true. In the previous chapter, Peter writes about influencers in the church who “speak bombastic nonsense” that is a cover for “licentious desires.” Those influencers use their bombast, he argues, to “promise freedom,” when “they themselves are slaves of corruption” (2 Peter 2:19). We now find in 2 Peter 3 that in order to rationalize mischief-making they deny the accountability that the Lord’s return would bring. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

The “scoffers” assume that the elements are static, that what always has been must remain as it is in perpetuity, that, in a word, there can be no interruption in the space-time continuum: “For ever since our ancestors died,” they insist, “all things continue as they were from the beginning of creation!” (2 Peter 3:4). Peter counters by asserting that everything that is, is not eternal. To Peter (and to the entire outlook of the Bible), the creation of the space-time continuum was something that could not have been anticipated. And it came about in the first place simply by “God’s word.” The big bang theory only confirms the mystery of something suddenly coming to be from nothing; and science offers no more compelling an explanation for how and why that all happened than the Bible’s “God spoke.” There’s no reason to think creation’s consummation is as unthinkable as its dawn. 

The “scoffers” think their critical distance from accepted teachings makes them creative and innovative. Peter’s perspective is that they are proving the veracity of prophecies already made about them: “I am trying to arouse your sincere intention by reminding you that you should remember the words spoken in the past by the holy prophets, and the commandment of the Lord and Savior spoken through your apostles … that in the last days scoffers will come, scoffing…” (2 Peter 3:2–3). Unintentionally, the scoffers write themselves into their predetermined place in God’s story. Their error is no big surprise. It’s a part of the anticipated knee-jerk reaction of the power of darkness to the fatal assault that took place against it on the Cross (see Paul’s teaching on the man of lawlessness and John’s on the antichrist). 

The “scoffers” assume that time works the same for God as it does for us. “The Lord is not slow about his promise, as some think of slowness…” (2 Peter 3:9a). Anglican priest and translator of the New Testament J. B. Phillips once titled a book Your God Is Too Small. One of the ways we mortals try to put God in a human sized box is by imagining him wearing a Timex that keeps his time in sync with ours. However, what seems like a long time to us is a nanosecond to God. By the same token, he can pack an eternity into, say, three days in a grave, where all the sins of all people of all time and all places are buried once and for all. If it takes millennia for God to gather his whole flock, when we look back from the far side of consummation, the whole process will appear as but a moment. Eternity keeps time differently than we do. 

In certain scholarly circles (I’m looking at you, Albert Schweitzer and Ernst Käsemann), the so-called “failure of the Parousia” takes the blame for the perceived flaws of later New Testament writers: the setting in of rigid doctrine, the establishment of a hierarchical church order, and the reconciling of Christian ethics with the values of this world. 

I’ve always been skeptical about every aspect of this thesis. To be sure, the apostle Paul, one of the earliest of the New Testament writers, finds he must tell the Thessalonians to settle down, because Christ’s return isn’t necessarily right around the corner. Not only is the Lord’s return not necessarily imminent, according to Paul, but, as Paul tells the Romans, the whole point of history now is about God bringing in a “fullness” of Jew and a “fullness” of Gentile (Romans 11:12,25). Paul doesn’t date those expectations, leaving open, instead, a wide vista on the prospect of a long-lasting mission to the world. As to rigid doctrine, Paul is already denouncing people who get their doctrine wrong (Galatians 1:8). As to church order, Paul refers to bishops and deacons in Philippi (Philippians 1:1). And as to ethics, he explicitly tells those same Philippians to affirm common ground with the values of their pagan neighbors (Philippians 4:8). 

The “scoffers” forget that God has a heart. “The Lord is not slow about his promise, as some think of slowness, but is patient with you, not wanting any to perish, but all to come to repentance” (2 Peter 3:9). We look around our world, and we see suffering, pain, abuse, and hardship. God looks around, and sees the opportunity for many, many, many more lost image-bearers to respond to his loving overtures. He sees with merciful eyes, and so he elongates the offer of repentance. Peter invites us to see God’s temporary allowance of the continuation of evil as a heartfelt reluctance on his part to pull the trigger on final justice, and an unwillingness to shut the door into the ark of salvation until every elect soul is aboard. 

Be blessed this day, 

Reggie Kidd+

Image: "Trad watch" by Kent Wang is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0