God Comes to Heal - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Thursday • 12/30/2021
The Sixth Day of Christmas, Year Two

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 20; Psalm 21; 1 Kings 17:17–24; 3 John 1–15; John 4:46–54

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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Elijah’s widow in 1 Kings: God comes to heal the nations. 1 Kings 17 recounts a non-Israelite widow receiving a revived son at the ministration of Yahweh’s prophet Elijah. For Jesus, this healing is a picture of Israel’s mission in the world: to be the source of healing for the world (Luke 4:25–26). Israel incubated God’s love for the world to the end that his love would eventually break out and flow everywhere. 

The royal official in John: God comes to heal all sorts of people. In Cana of Galilee, Jesus is approached by delegates of a “royal” (tis basilikos), presumably an official or member of the house of Herod Antipas. It’s notable that someone of such high rank would “beg [Jesus] to come down and heal his son” who is at the point of death (John 4:47). Jesus heals from afar. Though there are several matters worthy of attention in this account, here at Christmas and in conjunction with the other passages in today’s readings, what strikes me is the way this royal personage shows how upper-crust people are not beyond the reach of God’s love. In Jesus, God comes for the non-privileged (shepherds and deplorables) and for the privileged (royalty and influencers [like Nicodemus, one chapter prior]) alike.

3 John: missional hospitality. God is intent on reaching all the nations for all kinds of people. Some of us go. Some of us stay behind and help others go. That’s what makes the inclusion of 3 John in the canon of Scripture so intriguing. 3 John is a letter about hospitality, especially hospitality for the sake of the mission of God in the world. “God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son that whosoever believes in him would not perish but have everlasting life” (John 3:16). To the end that word of God’s astounding Son-giving love would get out to the whole world, the resurrected Jesus has breathed the Spirit upon and into his disciples (John 20:21–22). Bearing that Spirit, some of Jesus’s disciples carry the mission, and some of his disciples host the mission. 

What prompts the writing of 3 John is that, on the one hand, John wants to commend Gaius and the members of his church for hosting emissaries of Christ; and on the other hand, he feels compelled to denounce a certain Diotrephes, who “prevents those who want to do so and expels them from the church” (3 John 10). We don’t know whether Diotrephes is motivated by pure personal animus against John or whether he is one of the antichristian promoters of heresy John refers to in 1 and 2 John. The point for John is that Diotrephes’s pride and arrogance are blocking the mission of God’s love for the nations. 

When he sees ego and lovelessness at play in the church, John’s hackles get raised! John describes Diotrephes as one “who likes to put himself first” (philoprōteuōn), which is precisely the opposite of the quality of leadership Jesus says he is looking for.  

John, you may recall, has come by this lesson the hard way. One of the “Sons of Zebedee,” John and his brother—and their mother!—had made a play to get themselves moved up the ecclesiastical escalator. Jesus disabused them of confusing the Kingdom of God with some sort of Game of Thrones: “Then the mother of the sons of Zebedee came to him with her sons, and kneeling before him, she asked a favor of him. 21 And he said to her, “What do you want?” She said to him, “Declare that these two sons of mine will sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your kingdom” (Matthew 20:20–21). Jesus responds by assuring them they are not prepared for the “baptism” and the “cup” that lie before him. Moreover, he says, “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them. It will not be so among you; but whoever wishes to be great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first (prōtos) among you must be your slave; just as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many” (Matthew 20:25–28). 

Catch that one phrase? “Whoever wishes to be first (prōtos) among you must be your slave” (Matthew 20:26

John could have been Diotrephes, “he who likes to put himself first” (philoprōteuōn). No, John was Diotrephes. Except that following the rebuke of Matthew 20, Jesus’s teaching about servant leadership in that context, his modeling of servant leadership at the foot washing in John 13, and Jesus’s giving himself up on the Cross, the John who writes 3 John is a different person. 

On the plus side: generosity makes you a missionary. “Therefore we ought to support such people, so that we may become co-workers with the truth” (3 John 8). Some are missionaries by going. Some are missionaries by staying and supporting. That’s not mere rhetoric. It’s the stone cold sober truth! I praise God for those I know—and they are many!—with the heart of the generous Gaius (“my dear brother whom I love in truth”—3 John 1) and Demetrius (who “has been testified to by all, even by the truth itself”—3 John 12) whom John commends in this brief gem of a letter as counter-examples to egotistical Diotrephes. 

Be blessed this day,

Reggie Kidd+

Image: iStock photo

Life Is Holy - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Wednesday • 12/29/2021
Feast of Holy Innocents (transferred), Year 2

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 2; Psalm 26; Isaiah 49:13–23; Matthew 18:1–14

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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Feast of the Holy Innocents. 

The third panel in our “Christmas Triptych” is the Feast of the Holy Innocents, a remembrance of “martyrs in deed if not in will,” and a reminder of the church’s resolute embracing of life as holy. The lectionary offers passages in the Psalms, Isaiah 49 and Matthew 18 for today, presupposing we know the story of Herod the Great’s murder of Bethlehem babies in a vain attempt to kill a rival newborn king (Matthew 2). “It’s a bloody story,” notes Professor Esau McCaulley, “out of which hope fights its way to the surface.”

Psalm 2: the folly of opposing God’s Anointed. Psalm 2 begins with these pointed questions: “Why are the nations in an uproar? Why do the peoples mutter empty threats? Why do the kings of the earth rise up in revolt, and the princes plot together, against the Lord and against his Anointed?” Upon the release of John and Peter from prison in Jerusalem, the church lifts these very words in praise of God’s saving acts (Acts 4:25–28). King Herod the Great had tried to kill Jesus as an infant. His son Herod Antipas had been party to the conspiracy that put Jesus on the Cross. But the grave couldn’t hold Jesus. As Psalm 2 had said: “He whose throne is in heaven is laughing” (Psalm 2:4). All that the evil conspiracy had accomplished was to effect God’s predestined plan to inaugurate the good news of the world’s true king, the crucified-resurrected-ascended King Jesus. 

Professor McCaulley’s words are true not just for the incident of the Holy Innocents, but for all the savagery, injustice, and callousness of the human story. In all of it God is at work in the “bloody story, out of which hope fights its way to the surface.” 

Matthew 18: “Let the little ones come to me.” The murdered children are a reminder to us that Jesus entered a world full of “Herods.” Jesus said, “Let the little ones come to me.” And so, from the beginning of the church’s history, Christians have declared their solidarity with “the little ones.”* May our homes and our churches be places of safety, peace, truth, and love—places of life for “the little ones.” 

Isaiah 49: God’s love never quits.

Even as Isaiah was delivering the bad news to Judah about the upcoming Babylonian Captivity, he promised that Yahweh’s love would push through and ultimately win the day. The St. Louis Jesuits’ song “Though the Mountains May Fall” asks and answers the musical question:

Could the Lord ever leave you? Could the Lord forget his love?
Though a mother forsake her child, he will not abandon you. 

Though the mountains may fall and the hills turn to dust,
Yet the love of the Lord will stand
As a shelter for all who will call on his name.
Sing the praise and the glory of God.

One thing we can hold onto in this life is that the love of God never quits, no matter what baggage we carry, no matter how laden with guilt and in need of forgiveness we are, and no matter how weary and in need of strength we are. 

Be blessed this day,

Reggie Kidd+

Image: Pixabay

* The early Christian catechism, the Didache, forbids both the abandoning of the newborn and the aborting of unborn children (Didache 2.2). Clement of Alexandria laments the “aborting of human feeling (philanthōpia)” that comes with such practices (Pedagogus 2.10.96.1). Bishop Augustine of Hippo writes of “holy virgins” rescuing unwanted and exposed babies, nurturing them, and preparing them for baptism (Epistle to Boniface). Christians gained a reputation for being on the side of life. 

To Love Jesus First - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Tuesday • 12/28/2021
Feast of St. John (transferred), Year Two 

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 97; Psalm 98; Proverbs 8:22–30; John 13:20–35

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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Feast of St. John (transferred). In the tradition of the Christian Year, December 27 is a day to celebrate the life and ministry of St. John, Son of Zebedee, Beloved Disciple, and author of the Fourth Gospel, 1,2,3 John, and Revelation. Because Christmas Day falls on a Saturday this year, the Feast of St. John gets transferred to today, December 28. The Feast of St. John is the second panel in our “Christmas Triptych,” comprised of the Feasts of St. Stephen, St. John, and the Holy Innocents.

In last year’s reflections on the Feast of St. John (Year One), we focused on the unparalleled way in which John portrays the unambiguous divinity of Jesus all the while presenting poignant cameos of his humanity. The readings for this year, Year Two, cause us to ponder John as “the Beloved,” and what his being “the Beloved” says about Jesus as the embodiment, the bearer, and the messenger of God’s love.

For John, God both has and is relationship. That’s the only way to explain the Word being “with God” and “being God”: “In the beginning the Word was with God and the Word was God” (John 1:1). Jesus (the Word) can associate with God (the Father), and that means that God can have relationship. But if Jesus also is God in the same way that his Father is God, then that means relationship constitutes the very being of God. 

Proverbs 8: sweet anticipation. It takes the Incarnation itself to put that mystery before us so starkly. But that mystery had already been strongly hinted at in the Old Testament. In Proverbs 8, Solomon imagines “Wisdom” personified, and as accompanying God at creation—indeed, as being a “master worker” in the laying of the foundations of the earth (Proverbs 8:29c,30a). Christians understandably look back on the language of a personified “Lady Wisdom” in Proverbs (see the contrast between Dame Folly and Lady Wisdom in Proverbs 7–9) as a tantalizing preview of the Wisdom and Word of God taking human form in Jesus Christ. 

Especially intriguing is the love that flows between Wisdom and the LORD: “…then I was beside him, like a master worker; and I was daily his delight” (Proverbs 8:30). It becomes the Eternal Son’s mission—he who is quite literally, not merely literarily, the personification of Wisdom—to bring all the way to us the love that has always characterized God’s own self. 

John 13: Divine love at the table. 

By washing his disciples’ feet, Jesus quintessentially displays the love that is God’s nature. Today’s verses extract lessons from that event. They unpack for us the “So what?” of the foot washing. 

Intimacy eclipses authority. “One of his disciples—the one whom Jesus loved—was reclining next to [Jesus]; Simon Peter therefore motioned to him to ask Jesus of whom he was speaking” (John 13:23–24). Notice: Peter (the bearer of the keys) knows to come through John (the beloved at Jesus’s breast) to ask the hard question about who the betrayer is. Love precedes leadership. That’s why we will find Jesus asking Peter three times if Peter loves him before Jesus charges him: “Feed my sheep” (John 21:17). John teaches us to love Jesus first; then we’ll find out what we need to know and what he wants us to do. I repeat: Love him first. 

Jesus insists on offering fellowship, even when it’s certain to be rejected. Love is who Jesus is. Even after Satan “puts it into the heart” of Judas Iscariot to betray Jesus (John 13:2), and even though Jesus knows full well that this is the case, Jesus washes Judas’s feet along with everybody else at that table. 

Knowing also, as he no doubt does, that Judas will slink off “into the night” (John 13:30) to commit the most horrific act of cosmic treason and personal betrayal the world has ever seen, nonetheless, Jesus offers Judas the dipped morsel of fellowship and friendship. I’m hard pressed to think of a better illustration of a love that never quits, or of the veracity of C. S. Lewis’s saying, “The door of hell is locked from the inside.” 

Jesus calls upon us to make the mystery of God’s loving nature visible and believable. Jesus tells his disciples in a straightforward way what to do with the tableau he has painted for them: do likewise. “If I your Lord and Master have washed your feet, you too ought to wash one another’s feet” (John 13:14). Nothing less is at stake than the world’s being able to see in the disciples’ love for one another that they belong to Jesus: “…by this, the world will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another” (John 13:35). Beyond the authenticity of their discipleship, Jesus’s followers’ oneness will open a window for the world onto the very oneness within the Godhead: “…that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me” (John 17:23). 

That is a staggeringly wonderful prospect. You and I may not know the ontological argument for God’s existence (the idea that existence itself points to a Maker). But we can display God’s being and attributes by loving one another. We may not be able to articulate the teleological argument for God’s existence (the idea that the design of nature suggests an intelligence behind nature). But we can show that the design for human flourishing is creativity not destruction, harmony not disharmony, truthfulness not prevarication, kindness not cruelty—prompting the question even among nonbelievers, how is it we all intuitively know that’s what we were made for, regardless of how well we live up to the design? As the Beloved Disciple is later to write, “No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us” (1 John 4:12)—in other words, the closest the invisible God comes to becoming visible is in our love for one another. 

Be blessed this day,

Reggie Kidd+

Image: The St John Altarpiece, Hans Memling (ca. 1479), Memling Museum, Bruges, Belgium, Pixabay. 

Above It All, Always, Is Jesus - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Monday • 12/27/2021

Feast of St. Stephen (transferred), Year Two 

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 28; Psalm 30; 2 Chronicles 24:17–22; Acts 6–7

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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While everybody else is taking down the Christmas decorations and sending Santa on his merry way back to the North Pole, Christians who follow the Christian year are just beginning the party. We celebrate twelve days of Christmas. Through Advent, it’s been all about anticipation. Now for a season of celebration. 

Characteristic of Christian joy, however, is a tinge of pain. Jesus’s incarnation brought the Second Person of the Trinity all the way into the mess he had come to redeem: murder in the name of God, lovelessness among the “godly,” callous disregard for life’s “little ones.” The Christmas year acknowledges this reality with what I think of as “A Christmas Triptych.” We remember Stephen and his martyrdom on December 26, the apostle John and the commandment of love on December 27, and the “Holy Innocents” and the need to protect the vulnerable on December 28.*

Collect of Saint Stephen: We give you thanks, O Lord of glory, for the example of the first martyr Stephen, who looked up to heaven and prayed for his persecutors to your Son Jesus Christ, who stands at your right hand; where he lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, in glory everlasting. Amen.

Few of us are asked to take up our cross as severely as Stephen. However, in many parts of the world, losing your life for your faith is not uncommon. As a professor, I was humbled by the risks some of my students took in coming to the US for training in ministry. At least one student won a martyr’s wreath upon his return to his homeland. 

But there are other kinds of deaths besides crucifixion or stoning. They vary from lost job opportunities, to rejection by spouses or family members, to subtle and not so subtle snubs by former associates or friends. We can use these experiences to be reminded by St. Stephen that “the fellowship of the sufferings” of Christ is part of the privilege that comes with the Incarnation. 

The Christian story is one of forgiveness, forgiveness, always forgiveness. Stephen’s “Lord, do not hold this sin against them” (Acts 7:50b) is both a lovely echo of Jesus’s own forgiving prayer from the Cross, and also a powerful call to Christ-followers to resist the haters by not hating them back. It is a call to translate loss, rejection, and snubs into thankful praise for the new friendships and for the newly opened doors that always seem to follow the doors that get slammed in your face. 

Most importantly, Stephen teaches us that above it all, always, is Jesus: “But filled with the Holy Spirit, he gazed into heaven and saw the glory of God and Jesus standing at the right hand of God. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘I see the heavens opened and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God!’” (Acts 7:55–56). By his death Jesus destroyed death, and by his life he destroys our fear of death—every kind of death, the big ones and the little ones. As Lord of all, he is lord even when (as was the case with Stephen) deluded people are running the show and have you in their power. You never know when (as was the case with Stephen—see Acts 8:1) there’s a Saul/Paul in the wings observing, if uncomprehendingly in that moment, your equilibrium, your faith, and your undeniable love.  

I pray that as the Collect invites us to pray, we may know the absolute supremacy of Christ over every hand of opposition that comes against us or voice of criticism that we hear. I pray that the power of forgiveness and grace has the upper hand in our lives, and that it overflows to those around us. 

Be blessed this day, 

Reggie Kidd+

*Each day is “transferred” one day later this year, since December 26 falls on a Sunday. 

Martyrdom of Saint Stephen, (1598–1669), CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

The Assurance of Our Salvation - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Friday • 12/24/2021
Christmas Eve, Year Two 

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 45; Psalm 46; Baruch 4:36–5:9; Galatians 3:23–4:7; Matthew 1:18–25

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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At Christmas, “Faith” Came

“…if only I could believe….” My heart broke to hear those words from a college classmate after we finished reading Dante’s Purgatorio together: “The architecture of thought in the Christian vision is so beautiful,” he said, “and the hope is so radiant … if only I could believe it is true.” 

Years of pastoral ministry have brought many iterations of that same thought: “The promise of free forgiveness is inviting, but I just can’t believe it’s really that free.” … “What I’ve done is so bad, so unforgivable, there’s no way I can believe God can accept me.” … “I’d love to believe in Christ … but I’d love to believe in Santa Claus and the tooth fairy too!”

Personally, I’ve felt the pressure in sermon after sermon I’ve heard and theological treatise after theological treatise I’ve read to dig deep down inside myself for enough faith to feel certain about God’s love for and acceptance of me. How much faith must I have to know assurance of salvation? Sometimes that pressure has felt unbearable. 

But what about the prospect that the center of my faith—and the center of faith for all those who fear they just can’t believe, or believe enough, or believe accurately enough—lies outside us, not in us? What if it’s all a gift? What if it all comes from Jesus himself? 

“But now that faith has come…” (Galatians 3:25). These are some of the most extraordinary words Paul ever wrote. Behind them stands a mind-blowing proposition and a most amazing sequence of events. Paul is not saying that “faith” is a new thing with the New Testament, and that “faith” had not been exercised before the coming of Christ. The Old Testament is full of examples of faith. What Paul means is, “But now that Christ has come…” In this phrase, as New Testament theologian Richard Hays has argued, “faith” is a metonymy (another name for) Jesus.*

Somewhere in the councils of eternity, the Second Person of the Trinity, God’s Eternal Son, entrusted himself to the plan whereby his coming would bring us redemption. He delivered himself to a process by which he would become embryo, infant, toddler, child, adolescent, and adult. He gave himself to the journey of learning obedience—not like us, from disobedience to obedience, but from one level of obedience to another (Hebrews 5:8). He believed that if he surrendered to his betrayer, to his torturers, and to the agony of the Cross, he would be vindicated and brought back from the grave. He trusted that by his death, he would become the firstborn of many brothers and sisters (Romans 8:29). He believed that his shame would give way to fame, his humiliation to glorification. In Christ, there is “faith” beyond anything that could ever be asked of you and me. 

I’m a lot like Paul, who, by his own admission, could not find this faith in himself. He found it in Jesus: “the grace of our Lord overflowed for me with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus” (1 Timothy 1:14). And so, once again at Christmas, I find myself utterly astounded that a faith that I could not find within myself came for me—and for so, so many others who know how hard it is to believe. In Christ, faith comes. Through Christ, faith becomes a gift: “…and this is not your own doing,” says Paul, “it is the gift of God” (Ephesians 2:8). 

Thank you, Jesus, for believing for us what we could not believe for ourselves. Thank you for being the Incarnate manifestation of God’s own trustworthiness. Thank you for securing a salvation we could never dream up or make ourselves believe in. Thank you, thank you, thank you for being the assurance of our salvation. 

Merry Christmas, 

Reggie Kidd+

Image: eastern wall, Stykkishólmskirkja, Stykkishólmur, Iceland

*Richard Hays, The Faith of Jesus, p. 159. 

The Sheer and Utter Grace of Christmas - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Thursday • 12/23/2021
Thursday of the Fourth Week of Advent, Year Two

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 80; 2 Samuel 7:18–29; Galatians 3:1–14; Luke 1:57–66

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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I think it’s a mark of Paul’s brilliant dexterity that he can use the concept of “law” in more than one way, depending upon his audience and his intention. 

Titus: free from “lawlessness.” Yesterday in Titus 2, Paul informed us that (as God’s grace) Christ “gave himself to set us free from every kind of lawlessness (Greek = anomia)”—Titus 2:12,14). In the world of ancient Crete as far as Paul was concerned, “lawlessness” meant being out of sync with the nature of God’s being, violating relational reciprocity, and engaging in self-destructive lifestyles: “Cretans are always liars, vicious beasts, and lazy gluttons” (Titus 1:12). In the Cretan world that Paul addresses, to be subject to lawlessness (anomia) is to be imprisoned by bad religion, bestial behavior, and self-indulgent appetite. In doing so, Paul shows himself to be conversant with Greek ethical discourse, a discourse that prizes truth, justice, and self-control (Titus 2:12). 

What Paul wants Cretan Christians to understand is that Grace (= Christ) has appeared on the human scene in a saving way, that is, to put us back in sync with the order of the universe (Titus 2:11–12). Christ rescues us from every wrong approach to God, from every expression of cruelty to others, and from every way in which we abase his image within ourselves. And Christ wins for us the regenerating and renewing work of the Holy Spirit, who begins to make us over into people who delight to do God’s will, or as Paul says, at Titus 2:14, who become “zealous for good/noble/beautiful deeds.” 

And so, with a remarkable rebuke of “those of the circumcision” (Titus 1:10), but with a bow to the biblical story of exodus (“he rescued us” [Greek = hina lutrōsētai hēmas], Titus 2:14), Paul insulates these new Gentile believers from a wrong approach to the Old Testament story, and he draws them into that story the right way. For Grace (= Jesus) teaches us what the “law” of human flourishing is: to … live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives (Titus 2:12). Here Paul thinks of “law” as the way reality is ordered, and of Christ as the way we get our lives back in line with that reality. 

That is one glorious aspect of the work of God that is set in motion at the Incarnation. Praise be.

Galatians: free from the curse of the law. In Galatians, Paul confronts a congregation of people who think that they understand Christ’s work for them, but believe they must augment it by adding circumcision to that work. To do so, Paul argues, would be to place them under the “curse of the law”: “For all who rely on the works of the law are under a curse … Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us…” (Galatians 3:10a,13a). 

In Galatians, Paul is talking about one particular aspect of the law of God as revealed to Israel through Moses. That aspect is the law’s articulation of curses that attend the violation of God’s covenant. Everybody who thinks they can attain and maintain a relationship with God through their own human effort is sadly mistaken. For, as Paul says elsewhere, “all have sinned and come short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23). 

What Paul feels he must clarify to the Galatians is how we get redeemed or rescued from our breaking of God’s law. The journey that Jesus begins from the day of his birth leads to the Cross of Calvary. Eight days after Jesus’s birth, on the day of his circumcision, his mother hears, “a sword will pierce your own soul” (Luke 2:35b). Jesus’s ultimate circumcision will be when he is cut off from the land of the living on behalf of the whole human race. Cursed on a tree, he will bear the punishment of all covenant-breakers, all who slothfully and callously ignore God’s law (like the Cretans) and all who subtly violate it by pridefully thinking they can keep it (like the Galatians). The sheer and utter grace of Christmas is that Jesus comes among us to take it all into himself and onto the cross.

Collect for mission: Lord Jesus Christ, you stretched out your arms of love on the hard wood of the cross that everyone might come within the reach of your saving embrace: So clothe us in your Spirit that we, reaching forth our hands in love, may bring those who do not know you to the knowledge and love of you; for the honor of your Name. Amen. 

Be blessed this day, 

Reggie Kidd+

A Divine Sweetness - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Wednesday • 12/22/2021
Wednesday of the Fourth Week of Advent

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 72; 2 Samuel 7:1–17; Titus 2:11–3:8a; Luke 1:39–56

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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I love Tootsie Roll Pops! I loved them as a kid! I love them now! I love slowly sucking the sweet hard candy shell nearly through, and lightly crunching through to the soft chocolate center, making sure not to bite all the way into it, so I can savor sucking the chocolate inside all the way to the stick. Oh my! I love the outer/inner duality of Tootsie Roll Pops! 

Israel’s outer core: hope for humanity. I love Israel’s story of a coming human king who will deliver humanity from lawlessness, false religion, poverty, depression, and despair. I love the sweet hard candy of humanity’s hopes for salvation through a son of David. I love today’s promise to David in 2 Samuel of a perpetual line of righteous human kings. I love the way Psalm 72 celebrates the embodiment of that kind of rule under David’s son Solomon. I love Mary’s paean of praise to the God who has graced her womb with the king that David and Solomon had prefigured. 

Israel’s inner core: a taste of divinity. And I love that all along there had been the hints of an inner core of a deeper, different kind of sweetness, the taste of divinity. It would take, for instance, the appearance of more than a man for David’s throne to “be established forever” (2 Samuel 7:16). A Solomon who will “live as long as the sun and moon endure” is more than a mere mortal (2 Samuel 7:16; Psalm 72:5). Mary’s song comes from a heart overwhelmed with the realization that she is mother of no less than her own Lord (Luke 1:43). 

Christmas Day’s inner core for Crete. Israel’s story always carried within it the promise of a Tootsie Roll Pop dual sweetness. More, it seems, than any group the New Testament addresses, the Cretans need a taste of the inner sweetness. Cretans’ predisposition to elevate humanity to deity prompts Paul to compose some of the most thrilling verses in the Bible, and they have to do with the wonder of Jesus’s divinity, the core and the center of the Bible’s promises to us. 

Titus 2:11-3:8 contains verses that have rightly asserted themselves as Christmas Day passages in the lectionary. Here Paul exults in the great “epiphany” of God that took place at the Incarnation. Jesus is not human ego projecting itself into the heavens, but divine humility pressing itself into the stuff of our lives. Jesus is the divine sweetness at the core of Israel’s and all of humanity’s story. 

“But when the goodness and loving kindness (philanthrōpia) of God our Savior appeared…” (Titus 3:4). Jesus came to show the gracious, kind, and loving character of God. This is Paul’s way of saying what Jesus says in John’s Gospel: “If you have seen me, you have seen the Father” (John 14:9). 

To too many people, God looks sinister like J. K. Rowling’s Voldemort; predatory like Nightmare on Elm Street’s Freddy Kreuger; or unbendingly judgmental like Les Miserables’ Jabert. It’s not a new problem. Zeus punished Prometheus for having too much philanthrōpia, that is, for acting too much as though the gods had loving kindness towards humans (Aeschylus, Prometheus Bound 11,28). 

But when God himself appeared among us, says Paul, he showed us that God’s face turned towards us is a face of kindness and affection. “He it is who gave himself for us that he might redeem us from all iniquity and purify for himself a people of his own…” (Titus 2:14ab) and “so that, having been justified by his grace, we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life…” (Titus 3:7).” Here Paul explains the significance of the cross on which the Son of God and our Savior died. “God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son,” John tells us (John 3:16). Here, Paul tells us that Jesus the only begotten Son loved us so much that he gave himself to purchase us from sin, and to make us part of his Father’s family and citizens of the kingdom of heaven. 

“[H]e saved us, not because of any works of righteousness that we had done, but according to his mercy, through the water of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit. This Spirit he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior…” (Titus 3:5ac,6). Here Paul explains the significance of Christ’s  resurrection and ascension.  Jesus has made us new by the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on his church: humans’ ascent by divinity’s descent. We know the confidence of justifying grace and the security of our place in God’s family here and in eternity through the Spirit of Jesus within us. 

“For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all, training us to renounce impiety and worldly passions, and in the present age to live lives that are self-controlled, upright, and godly…” (Titus 2:11–12) and “who are zealous for good deeds” (Titus 2:14c). Jesus came to teach the way of life: godliness rather than religious lies, justice rather than cruelty, and self-control rather than self-indulgence. With God alongside us and among us and in us, we are no longer servants of ourselves (subject to no authority but our own, hating one another, slaves to various passions and pleasures—see Titus 3:1–3). With Jesus’s teachings codified in the New Testament and with his personal presence in us via the Holy Spirit, he causes us to burn with a passion to make life beautiful for others.

May you, this Advent and Christmas season, taste the dual sweetness of your own very human life being graced with the very presence of God.

O holy Child of Bethlehem, descend to us, we pray; 
cast out our sin, and enter in, be born in us today. 

Be blessed this day, 

Reggie Kidd+

That They May Be an Ornament - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Tuesday • 12/21/2021
Tuesday of the Fourth Week of Advent, Year Two 

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 66; Psalm 67; 1 Samuel 2:1b–10; Titus 2:1–10; Luke 1:26–38

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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 Titus: living counter-culturally

The me-centered religious spirit of Crete (“Cretans always lie,” which, in context, translates: “I can be a god!”)* creates a culture of cruelty and self-indulgence (“vicious beasts and lazy gluttons”).  

Paul’s antidote is twofold: he wants Titus to counter with what we translate as “sound doctrine,” but which might better be rendered “healthy teaching” (Titus 2:1). The word translated as either “sound” or “healthy” is hugiēs. It’s a medical term, from which we get “hygiene.” Teachers in the Greek world of Paul’s day saw themselves more as physicians of the soul, and less as experts about ultimate reality. At the end of Titus 2 and the middle of Titus 3, Paul will describe the basic elements of “sound doctrine” or “healthy teaching”—theology that revivifies people who were dead to God, and that brings heart-health and soul-satisfaction.** 

Those truths will counter the lies of a culture that says: “We can make ourselves into gods!” Before getting to those truths, though, Paul addresses the lifestyle that accompanies and supports those health-producing truths. There is a way of “being” and “behaving” that corroborates “right believing.” 

Here’s the way Paul begins and ends today’s paragraph to Titus: “But as for you, teach what is consistent with sound doctrine” (Titus 2:1). “…show complete and perfect fidelity, so that in everything they may be an ornament to the doctrine of God our Savior” (Titus 2:10). In the face of the cruelty and self-indulgence rampant in their social world, Cretan Christians have the amazing opportunity to show “what is consistent with” and what is “an ornament to” the profound truths of the gospel. They become their own proofs of the truths they present. 

Paul instructs older men, for instance, to conduct their lives with (among other things) temperance and love (Titus 2:2), the opposite of being lazy gluttons and vicious beasts. He calls older women, younger women, and younger men to refuse to neglect others’ needs for the sake of their own: “…not to be slanderers or slaves to drink … love their children, to be self-controlled” (Titus 2:3,4). 

There’s something for us to think about even in Paul’s instruction for slaves, despite the chasm between the first century world and ours. It would have been interesting to see how Paul would address wicked “Christian” slaveholders like those Frederick Douglass describes in his autobiography who viciously beat their slaves when they try to learn to read so they can understand the Bible. We don’t know exactly how household slavery worked in the Crete of Paul’s day. Regardless, Paul saw an opportunity for slaves to show an extraordinary dignity by refusing to lower themselves to backtalk and pilfering, and instead to show themselves worthy of any trust accorded to them. In this way, in a world in which everybody is in it for themselves, these slaves “adorn the doctrine of God our Savior” (Titus 2:10 RSV). The Greek word “ornament” (NRSV) or “adorn” (RSV) is kosmein, from which we get “cosmetics” and “cosmetology.” These servants of Christ beautify God by their way of being. 

Twice Paul says “…so that the word of God may not be discredited” (Titus 2:5) and “…having nothing evil to say of us” (Titus 2:8). The French Catholic commentator Ceslas Spicq suggests these are elegant litotes (negative statements that make a positive point): they display the logic by which the gospel would eventually win the Roman Empire through the lives of the saints. Artfully, Paul crowns the paragraph by giving the greatest dignity to the least of Christ’s servants: their fidelity and truthfulness in a world of selfishness and dissembling make God’s truth beautiful. 

Wherever you are today, I pray God gives you wisdom to discern how to make the character of God our Savior both visible and believable—and gives you the grace to pull it off! 

Be blessed this day, 

Reggie Kidd+

*See yesterday’s DDD. 

**See tomorrow’s DDD.

A Renewal of Our Wonder - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Monday • 12/20/2021

Monday of the Fourth Week of Advent, Year Two 

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 61; Psalm 62; Zephaniah 3:14–20; Titus 1:1–16; Luke 1:1–25

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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Paul has given Titus, one of his most senior proteges, a daunting task: to make the wonder of the Incarnation make sense to a people who already have their own upside-down ideas about how God could be born among humans. In ancient times, the island of Crete claimed to be home to Zeus, a human who became divine. Cretans claimed to be able to show both where Zeus was born and where he was buried. They claimed the good deeds he had performed for others had won him his deity.*

Titus’s job is to persuade Cretans that, by contrast, the Jesus whom Paul had preached among them was not a mere man who ascended to deity, but is “our great God and Savior” who has come down to us. In Titus 2 and 3, Paul will describe Jesus as the very embodiment of God’s “grace” (Titus 2:11) and God’s “goodness and loving kindness” (Titus 3:4).

In Titus 1, however, as prelude to commending the incarnation, Paul exposes what’s wrong with the Cretan view. He enlists the aid of an ancient Cretan prophet, a self-critical voice from within Cretan culture. With no small irony, the Cretan prophet whom Paul quotes (usually identified by scholars as the 6th-century B.C. seer and poet Epimenides) says “Cretans are always liars!” (Setting up a famous logical problem: if a Cretan tells you Cretans always lie, is his statement true or false? Think about it.)

The full quote that Paul derives from the Cretan prophet is: “Cretans are always liars, vicious brutes, lazy gluttons” (Titus 1:2). The essence of the Cretan prophet’s self-critique is that bad religion (“Cretans are always liars”) has created among the Cretans a vicious social climate (“vicious brutes”) and a populace with a self-indulgent personal ethic (“lazy gluttons”). 

There is plenty for each of us to ponder right here: How do our bad ideas about God make us uncivil towards others and indulgent towards ourselves? Especially to the extent that we entertain the Cretan idea that we are born as gods-in-the-making, each of us the center of the universe. Narcissism is as narcissism does! 

For his part, Paul argues that his opponents in the church offer no help. Merely teaching morality from Jewish heroes of the past does not curb anti-social behavior. Nor does performing fleshly, external rites of passage, like circumcision, curb uncontrolled cravings, for, “To the pure all things are pure, but to the corrupt and unbelieving nothing is pure” (Titus 1:15a). No, something deeper needs to happen within us. And that takes place not because we make ourselves into little gods, but because God himself has truly come down to us. 

Each in their own way, Zephaniah and Luke wondrously point us in the right direction. 

Zephaniah is a fourth-generation prophet who ministers in Judah in the years before the Assyrian and Babylonian conquests. Deeply immersed in the logic of God’s covenant, in Zephaniah 1, he blasts God’s people with the bad news of the judgment that is coming: “The day of the LORD … will be a day of wrath, a day of distress and anguish, a day of ruin and devastation, a day of darkness and gloom” (Zephaniah 1:14–18). His words inspired the Dies Irae musical motif, one of the most easily recognized musical themes in the history of Western music, frequently showing up in movie scores—always a harbinger of judgment. 

What is so lovely about today’s passage from Zephaniah is how it is revealed to the prophet that God’s own mercy and love will at last win out. The people will not make themselves better. They will not merit their rescue. But God himself will come among them to reclaim them. He will champion them once again with his love, and he will sing over them a song not of judgment, not of Dies Irae, but a song of joy and gladness, and of love renewed and celebrated: “[Yahweh] will rejoice over you with gladness, he will renew you in his love; he will exult over you with loud singing as on a day of festival” (Zephaniah 3:17). Rightly did one of my seminary professors refer to Zephaniah 3:17 as the John 3:16 of the Old Testament!

And the opening verses of Luke’s gospel are a perfect start to the week leading up to Christmas Day. Here Luke announces his intention to provide a well-researched and orderly account of the events of Jesus’s life and work. He says that he does so in order that his readers, “most excellent Theophilus” (Greek = “Friend of God”)—and, by extension, you and I (also friends of God)—may have full assurance of the things in which we have already been instructed (Greek = katēchthēs, “in which you have been catechized”—Luke 1:4). This week’s readings in Luke include the Song of Zechariah and Mary’s Magnificat—answers to Zephaniah’s promise of God’s song among his people. May we find here renewal of our wonder at the goodness of God’s good news. 

May today’s rich texts prove for us what Anselm said, that faith seeks (and finds) understanding. 

Be blessed this day, 

Reggie Kidd+

*See Reggie M. Kidd, “Titus as Apologia: Grace for Liars, Beasts and Bellies,” Horizons in Biblical Theology, 21.2, Dec. 1999, pp. 185–209; and the excellent treatment of Titus overall in Philip Towner, The Letters to Timothy and Titus (New International Commentary on the New Testament), Eerdmans, 2006. 

Armor of Light - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Friday • 12/17/2021
Friday of the Third Week of Advent, Year Two 

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 40; Psalm 54; Zechariah 7:8–8:17 (includes Saturday’s reading); Revelation 5:6–14; Matthew 25:14–30

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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Advent’s keynote Collect keeps coming to mind, and I find myself praying it constantly this Advent season: 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.

Today’s passages prompt meditation on casting away works of darkness and putting on armor of light. 

Zechariah. In Israel, the world was supposed to see what bearing God’s image looks like. Surrounding nations were supposed to see what God’s heart looks like in the way that Israelites lived their lives: committed to truthfulness, showing kindness and mercy especially to the lowly and the lost (Zechariah 7:9–10). God’s complaint, via Zechariah, is that he had placed Israel among the nations to be light amid darkness, but that they had contributed as much to the darkness as anybody. In place of justice, Yahweh found oppression; instead of kindness and mercy, hearts filled with evil intent; instead of ears attuned to God’s law and hearts ready to obey, ears purposefully stopped up and hearts adamantly set against God’s ways (Zechariah 7:11–12). Lord, have mercy!

But God’s redemptive purposes for Israel and the world can be held back only so long: “Just as you have been a cursing among the nations, O house of Judah and house of Israel, so I will save you and you shall be a blessing” (Zechariah 8:13). Yahweh brings his children home and promises peace and prosperity so they can return to their basic mission in this world as a kingdom of priests and as God’s “peculiar possession”: “Speak the truth to one another, render in your gates judgments that are true and make for peace” (Zechariah 8:16; and see Exodus 19:5,6). 

Judah’s and Israel’s return to the land is a call to cast away the works of darkness (deceit in the marketplace, in their courts, and in their worship; and oppression of the poor in their social life) and to put on the armor of light (truthfulness, peaceability kindness, and mercy). In doing so, Zechariah promises, they will receive his blessing: “For there shall be a sowing of peace; the vine shall yield its fruit, the ground shall give its produce, and the skies shall give their dew; and I will cause the remnant of this people to possess all these things” (Zechariah 8:12). 

Revelation. The generation of Zechariah, Zerubbabel, and Joshua experience in a promissory way the wonderful reality of God’s people being a light in the darkness of human experience, of modeling redemptive life amid fallen darkness. 

In the New Testament we find the fulfillment of Zechariah’s vision in the appearance of Jesus Christ. As the Lion of Judah who is slaughtered as a Lamb, Jesus removes forever the stench and the stain of sin. He ransoms for God people from “every tribe and language and people and nation” (Revelation 5:9b). Fittingly, then, the heavenly courts sing to Jesus “a new song”: “you have made them to be a kingdom and priests serving our God, and they will reign on earth” (Revelation 5:9,10). 

Matthew. On behalf of this same Jesus, Matthew addresses Jesus’s Parable of the Tenants to the church. As a result of his atoning death, the resurrected Jesus has received “all authority in heaven and on earth” (Matthew 28:18). If I may compress some of Jesus’s teachings in Matthew: with Emmanuel our King (“God with us”) living among and within us, we so manifest God’s life on this earth, whether by deed (“light of the world” … “salt of the earth” … “a city on a hill”) or by word (“making disciples … teaching … baptizing”), that at the end of time, people will have to acknowledge Jesus’s lordship (“… they will glorify your Father in heaven”—Matthew 5:13,14,16; 18:20; 28:20). 

The Parable of the Talents takes its place within the larger context of Jesus’s teaching in Matthew by showing us that each of us is given some place of authority and some empowerment within that great mission. How tragic it would be, according to the parable, if at the end of time we were to show ourselves contemptuous of the Lord who, like “a man going on a journey,” had so graciously entrusted us with a share of his estate. How magnificent it will be, by contrast, to find that our faithful use of what gifts and authority he has assigned us will doubly redound to his glory and to our own honor. 

It is a staggering prospect—enough to prompt the Advent prayer: help us, Lord, to “cast away the works of darkness, and put on the armor of light, now in the time of this mortal life…” Amen!

Be blessed this day,

Reggie Kidd+

Image: adaptation from "Armor by Helmschmied" by ellenm1 is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0

Oli in Our Lamps - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Thursday • 12/16/2021
Thursday of the Third Week of Advent, Year Two

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 50; Zechariah 4:1–14; Revelation 4:9–5:5; Matthew 25:1–13

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)

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. Many of us know what it is to look over the landscape of our lives and see devastation. Whether it’s being abandoned by parents or a spouse, being under-appreciated at work, seeing our body succumb to disease, or losing our willpower to resist an addiction or an obsession. Sometimes, surveying the wreckage of our lives can be debilitating. 

For such a time, Yahweh gives Zechariah a vision of hope. In 520 B.C., Jerusalemites inhabited a desolate city. Where Solomon’s temple had once stood, they could see only rubble. Under the leadership of Joshua the priest and Zerubbabel the governor, a foundation had recently been laid for a new temple. But, still, the overall scene was bleak, like a movie depiction of post-apocalyptic destruction. 

Through a fourth nighttime vision he gives to Zechariah, Yahweh invites his people to imagine the temple as though it had already been rebuilt and furnished. Yahweh highlights two furnishings: a golden lampstand and two olive trees (I’m not sure what olive trees are doing inside the temple—but dreams have their own logic!). Combining the symbolic elements of both furnishings, Yahweh urges them to understand that no matter how bad things look, there’s nothing he can’t accomplish by his Spirit.

“Not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit, says the LORD of hosts” (Zechariah 4:6). The oil of the lampstand and the oil which the olive tree produces are symbols of God’s life-giving, light-bearing, power-releasing Spirit. God’s fuel will keep the lights on in the temple. God’s strength will keep the workers working and the enemies and detractors at bay. 

“‘What are these two branches of the olive trees, which pour out the oil through the two golden pipes?’ He said to me, ‘Do you not know what these are?’ I said, ‘No, my lord. Then he said, ‘These are the two anointed ones who stand by the Lord of the whole earth’” (Zechariah 4:12–14). In Zechariah’s day, two offices received an empowering anointing: Joshua the priest, and Zerubbabel the governor, one to pray and the other to govern. The glory of the new order that Jesus would institute six centuries later is the combining of these roles into one: a Priest-King, after an older order, that of Genesis 14’s Melchizedek, who is both “king of righteousness” and “priest of the Most High” (see the Epistle to the Hebrews in toto).  

“The hands of Zerubbabel have laid the foundation of this house; his hands shall also complete it. … [W]hoever has despised the day of small things shall rejoice…” (Zechariah 4:9–10). Who could have imagined what this “day of small things” would yield? Fast forward to the astounding vision in Revelation of the Lion of Judah stepping forward in answer to the question as to who has the moral right and the capacity to unfold the scroll of human history: “‘Who is worthy to open the scroll and break its seals?’ … ‘See, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has conquered, so that he can open the scroll and its seven seals’” (Revelation 5:2b,5b). 

Refusing to wither in the face of adversity and of the enormity of the task set before them, Zechariah and Zerubbabel and Joshua gamely play their part in their “day of small things.” May God give us grace to do the same. 

Matthew: keeping oil in our lamps. Advent normalizes our waiting. Therein lies its poignance! Advent says that it’s OK to have a hard time holding onto hope when the horizon seems far off … and that it’s not OK to give up and quit hoping. That’s the entire point of Jesus’s parable about the bridesmaids. Through a long night watch, their one job is to be on the alert to welcome the groom. Half come prepared to do so and do stay on the alert. Half don’t come prepared, and finally must abandon their calling. As we’d put it colloquially, they run out of gas. Our job is to be among those who keep hoping and not run out of gas. 

Zechariah the prophet was given a glimpse of the great things that God was going to do to build his Kingdom; and his generation had no small part in keeping that hope alive. Joshua the priest and Zerubbabel the governor were called to envision a rebuilt temple and to work towards it, knowing all the while that it was “not by might, not by power,” but by God’s Spirit that the work would get done. But the true temple building awaited the appearing of Christ who united the work of Prophet, Priest and Prince; brought the whole system of sacrifice to its perfect end; and ushered in God’s righteous rule. 

God’s Kingdom has been inaugurated in all the events that flow out of Christ’s birth at Christmas. God’s Kingdom will be consummated at the end of time when Christ returns in triumph and power. In the meantime, God’s Kingdom continues among us in our Advent lives, as we learn to find hope in the ashes of our lives.* At Advent, we renew our commitment to count on the promise that God burns only to refine, that he wastes none of the tears of his loved ones, and that he makes every instance of suffering a “fellowship in the sufferings of Christ” himself (see Philippians 3:10). 

Richest Advent blessings to you this day, 

Reggie Kidd+ 

*Thanks to my friend Richard Pratt for his pithy way of putting the three-phase coming of God’s Kingdom: inauguration, continuation, and consummation. 

Image: Bíblia de Cervera, Menorá de Zacarias from National Library of Portugal , Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons