Knowing that Christ is King - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Thursday • 1/6/2022
The Feast of Epiphany

We’re taking a detour from the Daily Office readings for a few days. Instead, we’ll be 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 January 17.

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Dude! Bach is Bodacious!

If I could borrow Bill & Ted’s most excellent time-traveling phone booth, one of my first stops would be Leipzig, Germany, January 6, 1735. That’s the time and place one of the greatest worship leaders of all time worked some of his deepest magic.

Beginning on Christmas Day that 1734-1735 Christmas season, Johann Sebastian Bach had treated his congregation in Leipzig to five different cantatas celebrating different aspects of Christ’s birth. Now, on the Day of Epiphany (celebrating Christ’s “manifestation” as Savior of the world), Bach closes out his Christmas Oratorio with a sixth cantata. 

This last cantata in the Christmas cycle is an extended meditation on the Gentile magi bringing tribute to Israel’s — and their — newly born King. That’s standard Epiphany fare, with, of course, desperately power-mad King Herod playing the churlish foil, a pretend king resisting the coming of the true King. 

Yeah, we’ve all heard it before. So had Bach’s congregants. 

How to get their attention? How to keep the sublime truth of the magnificent reign of King Jesus and the stunning overthrow of faux-sovereigns like Herod from becoming just so much background music for our distracted lives? 

I wish I could have been there to hear the closing piece of the Christmas Oratorio BVW 248, “Nun seid ihr wohl gerochen” (English translation below).* For the first thirty seconds of the final piece of the cantata, the orchestra blasts out a bright baroque trumpet fanfare. They’re in the key of D major — the brightest and most triumphant of keys. Suddenly, the choir breaks in. The feel is still triumphant, and the key is still D major, but the tune is “O Sacred Head Now Wounded” — a melody that people had associated with Jesus’s suffering for our sins long before Bach made it the centerpiece of his St. Matthew’s Passion seven years earlier. The text the choir is singing now, though, is not about Jesus’s suffering. It’s about his victory over all that is evil, and about our resuming our rightful place at God’s right hand:

Now are You well avenged
Upon your enemies,
For Christ has broken asunder
All might of adversaries.
Death, Devil, Sin, and Hellfire
Are vanquished entirely;
In its true place, by God’s side
Now stands the human race.

Jaws must have been dropping. I know I would have been in tears. The precious truth of Jesus’s mission to die as our substitute can so easily become a coping mechanism at best, a prompt to morbid self-absorption at worst. The complementary truth of Jesus’s mission as our “Christus Victor” calls us to do more than merely put up with life’s tough stuff. Somehow King Jesus empowers us to share in his reclamation of life. Knowing that Christ is King “fortifies” us, as Calvin says, “with courage to stand unconquerable against all the assaults of spiritual enemies” (Institutes 2.15.4). 

Worship is a place where we get to enjoy the whole package deal. Worship craftsmanship calls forth from us — as it did from master worship leader J. S. Bach — the most faithfully imaginative ways of expanding our spirits to take in the fullness of God’s story. Christ is our substitute. We sob. Christ is our champion. We dance. He bears our sins. We drop to our knees. He breaks our bondage to sin. We rise with hands uplifted. He suffers for the world. We intercede. He empowers us to make the world different. We go to tell and live the story — excellently, even bodaciously. 

Be blessed this day, 

Reggie Kidd+

Image: Pixabay license

Sidebar — Resources

We’re all called to exercise the craft of worship leadership in different settings. Regardless of your setting, you personally may find Bach a worthy docent. No one has ever embodied theology more profoundly in music. Before we get too far past Christmas and Epiphany, his Christmas Oratorio would be worth a listen. 

Let me also recommend church historian Jaroslov Pelikan’s brilliant little book, Bach Among the Theologians (Wipf & Stock, 1986, 2003). Read about — and, of course, listen to — the way Bach fleshed out the twin portraits of “Christ our Substitute” in his Saint Matthew Passion and of “Christus Victor” in his Saint John Passion. 

* The YouTube rendering here is by Canzona and the Pacific Baroque Orchestra, 12/24/2020

Welcome to Transformation - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Wednesday • 1/5/2022

We’re taking a detour from the Daily Office readings for a few days. Instead, we’ll be 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 January 17.

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Undressed for Church

Jesus tells a parable about a man who accepts a king’s invitation to a wedding banquet but who shows up without clothes appropriate to the occasion (Matthew 22:11-14). Noticed by the king, he is kicked out. 

Whenever I read the parable, I think of myself in the early and woefully immature days of my faith – and of how my first pastor, Mort Whitman, related to me. I think of the several times I sensed in Mort’s sad eyes the King’s expectation: “Do you understand Who invited you? And to what an amazing occasion it is that you have been invited?” There were both sadness and tenderness — both a rebuke and a further invitation — in Mort’s gaze. 

Room to Grow

Every time I caught that look, I felt undressed, and was reduced (as was the fellow in the parable) to silence. Unlike the parable, though, strong arms didn’t grab me and throw me out. Happily, the King gave me time and space to move from a sullen silence to a teachable silence. Over time, the kindness with which Mort’s eyes answered my spiritual childishness melted my cold heart.

Mort welcomed me past the entrance, and into the expansive living spaces of God’s Kingdom palace. He did so by reminding me of the worth of the faith that I had embraced – or that had embraced me (I’ve never fully sorted that out).  

Early Church

Mort’s method was a lot like that of Cyril, bishop of Jerusalem (mid-4th century). In Cyril’s Jerusalem, becoming a Christian was the “deal.” The huge and elegant Church of the Holy Sepulchre had just been built over the site of Jesus’s crucifixion and resurrection (replacing a pagan temple to Venus). 

The city was awash with pilgrims and new residents. Many were flirting with the faith. Many sought baptism, the prerequisite for inclusion at the Christian Feast (Communion). Some sought baptism because they genuinely believed; some because they thought baptism might help them get a job; some because they thought baptism might help them find a mate; and some out of sheer curiosity. 

Cyril asked candidates for baptism a cautionary question: “Do you expect to see without being seen? Do you think that you can be curious about what is going on without God being curious about your heart?” (Procatechesis 2).* 

This is not just any occasion, so not any old clothes will do. The One in whose honor this feast is being held, after all, is “Bridegroom of souls.” Cyril reminds the candidates of the parable of the man who dressed wrongly for the king’s wedding feast: “If your soul is dressed in avarice, change your clothes before you come in…. Take off fornication and impurity, and put on the shining white garment of chastity.” 

Overdressed

Cyril wasn’t asking people to clean themselves up so God would accept them. As they would eventually discover, no matter what they wore, on the day of their baptism they were going to have to strip – yes, literally (in the dark, men and women separately) — and undergo baptism without benefit of any clothing! As Christ hung naked in his crucifixion, Cyril explained, so we go naked into the baptismal waters where we share our co-crucifixion with Christ. As Adam and Eve were originally garbed in nothing but their innocence, so, in Christ, we rise as those to whom innocence has been restored! Cyril’s message was: don’t think you can take your greed and impurity with you into the baptismal waters; he loves you too much to let you hold on to that stuff!

When the newly baptized emerged naked from the waters, they were wrapped with new, white robes. The message: in place of whatever clothes we start with, Christ offers “a shining garment,” “the garment of salvation,” and “the tunic of gladness.”** The newly baptized wore those robes during the next week, when they received daily teaching about the mysteries they had just experienced and about the baptized life that now lay before them. 

Welcome to Transformation

The King has sent for everybody, “the evil and the good” (Matthew 22:10). But the One who invites insists on meddling. He refuses to rubber-stamp the attitudes, behaviors, and beliefs we bring with us. Our “Bridegroom of souls” insists we surrender the right to define who we are – all of who we are: our occupational, our musical, our political, our sexual selves. Jesus, insists Cyril, calls us to welcome people all the way into baptismal waters, where grace transforms everything. 

My take-away from Mort’s penetrating gaze and Cyril’s challenging words: worship worthy of the Feast is welcoming worship that helps us all understand that a change of clothes will be necessary. 

Be blessed this day,

Reggie Kidd+

Imge: iStock Image

* References are from Edward Yarnold, S.J., Cyril of Jerusalem (Routledge, 2000), pp. 79,80,85,180-181.

** (Procatechesis 16; Mystagogy 4.8; the latter two phrases, quoting Isaiah 61:10)

"High Touch" Worship - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Tuesday • 1/4/2022

We’re taking a detour from the Daily Office readings for a few days. Instead, we’ll be 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 January 17.

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High-Touch Worship: “The Peace of the Lord”

“Christian worship has always been a “high-touch” affair. “Greet one another with a holy kiss,” Paul told worshipers (2 Cor 13:12). Peter urged those gathered for the reading of his letter, “Greet one another with the kiss of love” (1 Pet 5:14). Accordingly, from the 2nd century on we find Christians exchanging signs of mutual affection and reconciliation before they go to the Table. 

I think that’s a good thing.  

There’s a genuine artistry to the way the classical liturgy makes the passing of the peace a part of worship. In the 4th century one of the great voices of the ancient church, Cyril of Jerusalem, explained why believers exchange a kiss of peace just before they approach the Lord’s Table. 

Next let us embrace one another and give the kiss of peace. Do not think this is the kiss which friends are accustomed to give one another when they meet in the marketplace. This is not such a kiss. This unites souls to one another and destroys all resentment. The kiss is a sign of the union of souls. 

That was Awkward. 

Recently, an advice columnist responded to a complaint about being forced to greet fellow attendees in church. The columnist countered that in a world as disjointed as ours, we should be grateful that the church tries to bring people together. I agree! But I also feel the sense of artificiality and of being put upon when there’s a “meet & greet” that is no different than what I might experience at the Chamber of Commerce. 

To me it’s a wonderful thing to be asked to look my neighbor full in the face and wish him or her Christ’s peace. That makes me (along with all my fellow believers) a priest who offers God’s healing touch. Respectfully, though, it’s a turn-off to be told to smile, turn to the person next to me and say, essentially, “How ya doin’?” 

The first act invites Christ into the moment and makes us family; the second makes two awkward strangers even more awkward about not knowing each other. At least the Chamber of Commerce encourages us to exchange business cards. 

Welcoming Peace

When I coached Little League, a friend and “master coach” gave me some good advice: “Kids this age have too many challenges, and not enough encouragement. Every practice you should go to each player, put a hand on their shoulder, look them in the eyes, and say, ‘I’m glad you’re on this team. You make a big difference for us.’” 

When I come to worship I never know what sort of pain my neighbor is in, how much it can help him or her to be touched and to be reminded: whatever the deficit, whatever the enmity, whatever the trouble, whatever the funk, Christ speaks his peace into it.  

Healing Peace 

Benjamin Barber writes that we live in a world split between the centripetal force of McWorld (the forced unification of a global market) and the centrifugal force of Jihad (the fracturing of the human race around tribal loyalties). We all, I think, feel those wounds in one way or another. 

Followers of Christ believe that if there’s any hope for overcoming the evil twin forces of MacWorld and Jihad, it’s living and telling the subversive story of God’s invasion of the planet through his Son. In Jesus, as the song goes, “Heaven’s peace and perfect justice kissed a guilty world in love.” When we pass the peace of Christ to one another, heaven’s peace becomes embodied once again. Then at the Table we taste how Jesus even now “unites souls to one another and destroys all resentment.”

Possible applications:

Some of us are in churches where it might be worth opening up the following conversation: ”Are we so respectful of people’s privacy, of their personal space, that we miss the opportunity to let them know that this is a place – no, the place — where the lonely, the estranged, the fearful, and the broken, can be touched and can hear that God has come near to them?”

Others of us are in churches where it might be worth opening up a different conversation: “When’s the last time we asked people to think about what a holy and healing thing it is that they do when they offer the Lord’s peace?”

The peace of the Lord be always with you,

Reggie Kidd+

Image: Pixabay License 

A Mirror for Our Soul - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Monday • 1/3/2022

We’re taking a detour from the Daily Office readings for a few days. Instead, we’ll be 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 January 17.

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From Centerfield: Athanasius, the Psalms, and Making the Right Play

I once attended a college baseball game in which the crowd cheered a spectacularly dumb throw from deep centerfield to home plate. The throw itself was quite a feat (though it had no chance of catching the runner). But it was dumb, because it gave the game away by allowing what would become the tying run to get to second base. What could have saved the game would have been a less impressive throw to second base, keeping that runner at first.

Four Ecumenical Councils took place between A.D. 325 and 451. They exemplified game-saving wisdom, of the sort the college centerfielder should have shown.

Those Councils made four statements in response to spectacularly dumb things that were being said about Christ. The Councils’ statements can be crisply put, and their implications are profound: first, Christ is fully divine, since only God can save. Second, Christ is fully human, since “only that which is assumed can be healed.” Third, Christ is one integral person, since a bi-polar Savior could not restore us to inner wholeness. Fourth, Christ’s divine nature does not eclipse his human nature, since he came to glorify our humanity and not diminish it.

A small often overlooked letter on the psalms by Athanasius, bishop of Alexandria and one of the inspirers of the Councils’ statements, sheds light on the origins of such spiritual and theological insight.

A friend named Marcellinus wrote to Athanasius looking for guidance on how to get to know the psalms better. In his response, Epistle to Marcellinus, Athanasius sounds the very themes the Councils will later apply to Christ.

Divinity

In the Incarnation, God has funneled his fullness to us through one Man; in the Psalter, God has concentrated for us the whole Bible in miniature. Each of the other books, says Athanasius, “is like a garden which grows one special kind of fruit; by contrast, the Psalter is a garden which, besides its special fruit, grows also some of those of all the rest.” In Genesis, for example, we read about the creation; in Psalms 19 & 24 we celebrate creation in song. Exodus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy recount the exodus from Egypt; in Psalms 87, 105, 106, and 114 we “fitly sing it.” Impressively, Athanasius shows how virtually every theme of the Bible shows up somewhere in the Psalter. Through the psalms, God’s great cosmic story becomes our personal story as well.

Humanity

The psalms aren’t just a way into God’s story; they provide a mirror for our soul. In them, “you learn about yourself.” They describe us better than we can describe ourselves. Moreover, while other portions of Scripture tell us what to do, the Psalter shows us how. Elsewhere, for instance, Scripture tells us to repent, but the psalms “show you how to set about repenting and with what words your repentance may be expressed.” Elsewhere, Scripture tells us to bear up under persecution, but the psalms describe “how afflictions should be borne, and what the afflicted ought to say, both at the time and when his troubles cease.”

Integrity

Most of us can identify with the horrible split the apostle Paul experienced between his inner self and his outer self: “I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do. … Wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from this body of death?” (Rom 7:19,24). Paul’s answer, of course, is Christ. The Councils affirmed, therefore, that Christ himself was unified, rather than split, in his Person. Otherwise, there’d be no hope for the splits within us. In the same vein, Athanasius encourages – no, urges – us not merely to read the psalms, but to sing them. When we sing, our inner being and our outer being have to work together: our “usual disharmony of mind and corresponding bodily confusion is resolved.” The result is that when we sing psalms, Christ heals our inner brokenness.

Dignity

Do you get the sense that some believers think that when Christ comes into their lives he replaces their souls? Do you personally know spiritual zombies you can’t even have a conversation with because all you get is Bible verses or spiritual clichés?

Athanasius must have known people like that too. One of the most impressive things he does in his epistle is comment on almost every psalm, and invite Marcellinus to look – really look – at whatever life-situation he might find himself in and ask how that psalm could fortify him: “Has some Goliath risen up against the people and yourself? Fear not, but trust in God, as David did, and sing his words in Psalm 144.”

The message: God wishes to meet you in your life, not give you some sort of escape button to get you out of your life. The psalms – like Christ himself – are here to enhance, not diminish, what it is to be fully human.

Through practice and scrimmage and games and, well, simply breathing baseball, a centerfielder should know where to throw, without even having to think about it. Through worship and prayer and study and, well, simple immersion in the faith of the psalms, may we absorb their “game-saving wisdom.”

Be blessed this day, 

Reggie Kidd+ 

Image:  "Lady in the mirror" by ftphotostudio is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Jesus Offers to Fix What's Broken - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Friday • 12/31/2021
Friday of Christmas Week, New Year’s Eve Day, Year Two 

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 46; Psalm 48; 1 Kings 3:5–14; James 4:13–17; 5:7–11; John 5:1–15

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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Turning towards a new year, I think less in terms of resolutions, and more in terms of requests from the God from whom every good gift comes. God’s Word commends four worthy requests:

1 Kings 3: Solomon and a wise and discerning heart. King Solomon represents an elevated phase in God’s plan to restore the human race to its fundamental mission: to tend God’s garden, to exercise dominion over creation, and to make the earth redound to his glory. 

I daresay none of us has quite the governing responsibilities of a Solomon. But every one of us does have some realm to rule or space to oversee. It may be a kitchen to keep clean and productive, a lawn to tend, a store to manage, a spreadsheet to keep balanced, maybe even, I dunno, a rocket to help launch. 

The greatest gift we can seek from the Lord is that which Solomon sought: a grasp of the reality we face, its opportunities and its challenges; and the wisdom to discern how to further God’s beautifying and redemptive purposes for the creation he loves.

Prayer for Guidance: Direct us, O Lord, in all our doings with your most gracious favor, and further us with your continual help; that in all our works begun, continued, and ended in you, we may glorify your holy Name, and finally, by your mercy, obtain everlasting life; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. (BCP, p. 832)

James 4: Circumspection in planning. James 4:13–17’s wisdom is an expansion of Proverbs 16:9, “The mind of a person plans their way, but Yahweh directs their steps” (my translation). I can’t help but think of the semi-irreverent adage: “We plan. God laughs.” He may not laugh at us, but perhaps we should laugh at ourselves when we think we have life all planned out. The past couple of years have called upon every person I know to be flexible, adaptable, and nimble. It’s been a time to reckon much more seriously with passages like this one. We are fragile, and our days on this earth are fleeting. James cautions us against smugly over-planning: “Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wishes, we will live and do this or that” (James 4:15). 

It’s not a bad thing to have been put in a position where we are virtually forced to pray along with the psalmist: “Teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom” (Psalm 90:12). 

James 5: The ability to wait out hard times. As if you need to be told, crazy abounds. Miami Herald columnist and novelist Carl Hiaasen was once asked how he could expect his readers to accept his utterly bizarre scenarios about life in South Florida. His answer was (I paraphrase from memory): “Every time I write something that seems over the top, and tell myself people will think I’ve lost my grip on reality, I read something crazier in the newspaper. My imagination isn’t big enough to capture the crazy.” That’s our world. A once-in-a-century killer disease rages. The corridors of power ring with incivility. News agencies pick sides. People in everyday life do the stupidest things, and keep the 24/7 news cycle cycling. 

James says, “Be patient, therefore, beloved, until the coming of the Lord. … You also must be patient. Strengthen your hearts…” (James 5:7a,8a). To some extent, what we are called to do (besides calling out what craziness we can!) is to outlast it. Yes, crazy comes in waves. Those waves will crest and crash and eventually exhaust themselves. We must simply keep ourselves from being swept under or away. God, give us grace. 

Prayer for Quiet Confidence: O God of peace, you who have taught us that in returning and rest we shall be saved, in quietness and in confidence shall be our strength: By the might of your Spirit lift us, we pray you, to your presence, where we may be still and know that you are God; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. (BCP, p. 832)

John 5: The willingness to accept healing from Jesus. Jesus offers to fix what’s broken, in this case, non-functioning legs, for a man he encounters by a healing pool in Jerusalem. And Jesus winds up healing him over his excuse-making: “Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up; and while I am making my way, someone else steps down ahead of me” (John 5:7). 

It may not be our legs that don’t work. It may not be that we have seen opportunity after opportunity to address our brokenness pass us by for 38 years. But we all have reservoirs of hurt or secret obsessions or masked pretenses that one day will have to be purged. And it may be that this next year is when Jesus will come up to us and ask, “Do you want to be made well?” (John 5:6b). May God give us the grace to say “Yes!” to Jesus. 

Prayer for Trust in God in Time of Sickness: O God, the source of all health: So fill my heart with faith in your love, that with calm expectancy I may make room for your power to possess me, and gracefully accept your healing; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. (BCP, p. 461). 

Be blessed this day, and every day in the year ahead!

Reggie Kidd+

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+