Deliverance from the Pit - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Friday • 3/11/2022
Friday of 1 Epiphany, Year Two 

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 40; Psalm 54; Genesis 40:1–23; 1 Corinthians 3:16–23; Mark 2:13–22

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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Psalm 40 and David’s deliverance from the pit. David feels compelled to extol Yahweh’s righteousness, his faithfulness, his salvation, and his steadfast love (Psalm 40:10). For after “waiting and waiting” (Psalm 40:1 my rendering) and crying out for help from the bottom of a desolate pit, David finds deliverance from Yahweh: “[H]e stooped to me and heard my cry for help. He pulled me up from the seething chasm, from the mud of the mire. He set my feet on rock, and made my footsteps firm…. He put a fresh song in my mouth…” (Psalm 40:1b–3a NJB). 

Genesis 37 and Joseph’s deliverance from the pit. Psalm 40 could have been Joseph’s song. Today’s chapter in Genesis places Joseph in the bottom of his own desolate pit, “the seething chasm” and “the mud of the mire.” He’s been here before, when his brothers threw him into a pit, and conspired first to murder and then to sell him off to Midianite slavers. Now, falsely accused of sexual assault by Mrs. Potiphar, he’s in Potiphar’s prison. His God-given power to interpret dreams secures deliverance for his fellow prisoner, Pharaoh’s cupbearer. In return for that service, he asks simply for the kindness (ḥeseḏ) of being remembered (Genesis 40:14). The thanks he receives, instead, is to be forgotten (Genesis 40:23) — forgotten, that is, until in Yahweh’s perfect timing, the cupbearer finally remembers two years later! Joseph will be lifted up from prison and raised to a position from which he will serve as deliverer of all of Egypt and surrounding nations.

Meanwhile, from his desolate pit, Joseph learns the spiritual discipline of “waiting and waiting” and, no doubt, of calling out, as Bono sings in U2’s hauntingly beautiful version of Psalm 40, “How long?” May David’s song minister to each of us whenever we find ourselves in “the seething chasm” and “the mud of the mire.” 

“I proclaimed righteousness in the great congregation” — Psalm 40:10a. David tells “the great congregation” what God has done for him, because he knows his personal experience of deliverance does not belong to him alone. His life belongs not just to Yahweh but to the people he is called to serve. He’s redeemed by God, not just for his own sake,, but by God for all God’s children. His personal story belongs to the whole congregation, so he must proclaim it to them. 

Today’s reading in 1 Corinthians sounds a similar note: “If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy that person. For God’s temple is holy, and you are that temple” (1 Corinthians 3:17). The “you” here is plural, by which Paul means that the Corinthians together make up God’s temple. There is a whole of which each Corinthian believer is a part, and it is a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts. The Corinthians are acting like each one of them is a separate, independent agent — free to choose their favorite preacher, free to sue each other to secure their rights, free to have sex (or not have sex) with whomever they please, free to display their gifts of spiritual prowess to make themselves look good. 

Paul says they together are God’s “field,” God’s “building,” and God’s “temple” (1 Corinthians 3:9,16). No matter how many members they are, the important thing is that they are “one body” (1 Corinthians 10:17; 12:12–13). And therefore, even sometimes at the cost of curtailing genuine liberties, they are to do only what “is beneficial” to everybody, only what “builds up” the whole (1 Corinthians 10:23). They are to exercise their individual gifts “for the benefit of all” (1 Corinthians 12:7). They are to “wait for one another” (1 Corinthians 11:33), and do nothing that “divides Christ” (1 Corinthians 1:13), nothing that goes beyond what Paul teaches “in all the churches” (1 Corinthians 4:17; 7:17; 14:33b). They — and we as well — are, in a word, to let love rule (1 Corinthians 13). 

A word of application for Lent: Lent isn’t necessarily only about subtraction; it can be about addition as well. How about we add love? “Let all that you do be done in love” (1 Corinthians 16:14). 

As do many of David’s psalms, Psalm 40 looks forward to a distant future, to a deliverance that shatters expectations, and — indeed, to a Deliverer who surpasses all predecessors. The writer to the Hebrews sees in Psalm 40 an advance portrait of Christ: 

“Sacrifices and offerings you have not desired,
    but a body you have prepared for me;
6 in burnt offerings and sin offerings
    you have taken no pleasure.
7 Then I said, ‘See, God, I have come to do your will, O God’
    (in the scroll of the book it is written of me)” (Hebrews 10:5–6; citing Psalm 40:8–9).

Today’s reading in Mark highlights features of Jesus’s ministry that make him this Deliverer of an expectation-shattering deliverance: 1) he calls ordinary people to an extraordinary life (Mark 2:13–14); 2) he portrays himself as friend of sinners and physician of the soul-sick (Mark 2:15–17); 3) he declares himself to be the long-awaited Bridegroom who has come for God’s Bride; and 4) therefore it’s time to let ourselves become new wineskins for the new wine of God’s great wedding feast (Mark 2:21–22). 

May God the Father enable us to live today in the knowledge that no matter how deep the pit we find ourselves in, he hears our cry. May God the Holy Spirit create in us hearts that love and serve one another, “the temple of God.” May Christ, God’s dear Son, prove himself to be our Friend, Physician, and Groom. 

Be blessed this day, 

Reggie Kidd+

Image: From "Zombie Run Pittsburgh (311)" by Rhett Landry is marked with CC BY-SA 2.0

Healthy Words for the Season of Lent - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Thursday • 3/10/2022
Thursday of 1 Epiphany, Year Two

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 50; Genesis 39:1–23; 1 Corinthians 2:14–3:15; Mark 2:1–12

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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It’s in the deep recesses of our hearts that God is doing business. 

Mark: “Your sins are forgiven.” Because they care about his physical affliction, a lame man’s friends lower him through the roof into a place where Jesus is teaching. Jesus sees on that cot a sinner in need of forgiveness. He could say, “Get up and walk.” Instead, he says,  “Son, your sins are forgiven,” accomplishing both an inner and an outer healing (Mark 2:5). Scoffers want to debate Jesus’s implicit claim to deity. Jesus asks them about what he perceives is going on in their hearts: “Why do you raise such questions in your hearts?” (Mark 3:8b). 

Paul: Egotists need a better sense of self. Paul is concerned that egotism and narcissism are making a mess of things in the church of Corinth. Ten times in the span of today’s brief reading in 1 Corinthians, Paul uses a term that puts the spotlight on the responsibility of each individual to take stock of what is motivating them; for example, “… each will receive wages according to the labor of each … the work of each builder will become visible … the fire will test what sort of work each has done …” (1 Corinthians 3:8b). 

The only way for egotism and narcissism to be defeated by Christ is for egotists and narcissists to be challenged in their stronghold: their sense of self. Is your inner being, Paul wants to know, governed by the Spirit or by the flesh (1 Corinthians 3:14–15)? He wants them to see that if they live by the Spirit, they will see that they are small contributors to a greater whole, God’s field and God’s house — and they will be contributing to their own eternal inheritance (1 Corinthians 3:9,14. If they continue to live by the flesh, their jealousy of others and their playing party politics will damage God’s field and house — and they will be discounting their own eternal inheritance (1 Corinthians 3:15). 

Soberingly healthy words for the season of Lent. Lord, have mercy upon us!

Joseph: Learning God’s love in prison. An amazing work is being done in Joseph’s inner being. It seems he has come a long way since his brash and entitled days back home. He is learning that everything can be stripped away, but that you can be OK if you are left with two things: God’s presence and your own moral centeredness. Because of his stalwart and steady resistance to the advances of Potiphar’s wife (“How then could I do this great wickedness, and sin against God?” — Genesis 39:9), Joseph gets sent to prison. Of his situation the psalmist says: “They bruised his feet in fetters; his neck they put in an iron collar” (Psalm 105:17–18). Here in prison Joseph is “at the lowest point of his fortunes, forlorn and helpless,” notes commentator Nahum N. Sarna. * That makes it so very apt that it is here that Genesis says for the only time in the entire Joseph-narrative that Yahweh shows Joseph his “steadfast love” (ḥāseḏ): “Yahweh was with Joseph …and showed him steadfast love…” — Genesis 39:2,3,21,23. It’s in those fetters and in that iron collar that Joseph learns that God is with him and loves him everlastingly. 

Many of us can look back at a low point in our lives and say, “There, right there, is where I began to sense God begin to pour out his love on me.” Many of us, no doubt, are in just such a place right now. Lent is an excellent time to look back and look up and say, “Thank you, Lord!”  

Be blessed this day,

Reggie Kidd+

Image: Pixabay

* Nahum N. Sarna, Genesis: The Traditional Hebrew Text with the New JPS Translation with Commentary (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1989), p. 276.

God Loves Misfit Toys - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Wednesday of 1 Lent, Year Two

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 119:49–72; Genesis 37:25–36; 1 Corinthians 2:1–13; Mark 1:29–45

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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Genesis 37 and twenty pieces of silver. Everyone who has ever felt like an exile on the “Island of Misfit Toys” has a friend in Joseph. Filled with envious spite, his brothers sell Joseph to Midianite traders. The brothers pull him “out of the pit” and hand him over for twenty pieces of silver (Genesis 37:28) — a chilling forecast of Judas Iscariot’s thirty pieces of silver. 

At the same time, the picture of an innocent agent of redemption being brought out of a pit will become a powerful image of God’s saving love. Joseph will be delivered from Potiphar’s prison and set “over the land of Egypt” (Genesis 41:14,43,45). Daniel will be lifted out of the lion’s den (Daniel 6:23). Jeremiah will be pulled up from a cistern (Jeremiah 38:13). David will celebrate being delivered from “the desolate pit” (Psalm 40:2). Finally, God’s own Son will be raised up from the grave to be “declared to be Son of God with power according to the Spirit of holiness” (Romans 1:4).

God loves “misfit toys.” He watches over them, and even uses one to save the world: 

1 Corinthians and God’s upside-down wisdom. There is no more powerful a picture of God’s saving love than Paul’s “crucified Lord of glory” (1 Corinthians 2:8). One of the things that makes the story of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer so poignant is the fact that Rudolph’s red nose makes him a “misfit.” In an updated movie version, Rudolph finds himself on the Island of Misfit Toys. He identifies with the misfit toys and eventually becomes their rescuer. How much richer is the story of a “Lord of glory” who, though himself not a sinner, comes among sinful people and gives himself over to “become sin” in order to make sinful people righteous (2 Corinthians 5:21). In doing so, Jesus breaks the power of sin over all of us who know there’s a misfit between ourselves and God, between ourselves and the world around us, and between a true and a false self within ourselves. 

Paul calls the logic of this story “the wisdom of God” (1 Corinthians 2:7). It’s not a logic understood by people who fit in with “the wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age” (1 Corinthians 2:6). In the story that “the wisdom of this age” tells, the rules of power, of beauty, of self-aggrandizement, and of resume-padding apply. In the story governed by “the wisdom of God,” the logic of grace, of frailty, of self-surrender, and of humility apply. It’s a logic that does not come naturally, for it is a mindset that God’s Holy Spirit must impart to our spirit. It’s the work of the Spirit of God “interpreting spiritual things to those who are spiritual” (1 Corinthians 2:13b). 

May God give us grace during this Lenten season to carve out time for quiet listening, for opening our spirit to hear God’s Spirit reminding us of God’s wisdom, rather than the world’s. May God grant us a holy sense that we are misfits in a rebellious world that says, “I’m going to do what I want, when I want, and exactly how I want to do it.” May God increasingly mold us for heaven’s life, teaching us to say, “God, your will not mine, on your timetable not mine, and your way not mine.” 

Be blessed this day,

Reggie Kidd+

Image: Rankin Bass, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The Antidote to Envy - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Tuesday • 3/8/2022
Tuesday of 1 Lent, Year Two 

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 45; Genesis 37:12–24; 1 Corinthians 1:20–31; Mark 1:14–28 

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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Aggrieved people do grievous things. That’s the story of Joseph’s murderously envious brothers. It’s the story of mistreated children who become playground bullies. It’s the story of nations and people groups who launch wars and campaigns of genocide after generations of being looked down on. Lent is a season that invites every one of us to look within to ask if we are dying from envy’s venomous bite. 

Genesis 37 and envy’s poison. Familial dysfunction afflicts the human race as soon as the serpent begins to sow discontent in our original parents: “God knows that when you eat of [the fruit of the tree] your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God” (Genesis 3:5b). Displeased with our “less than” status with respect to God, we somehow take it out on one another: husband blames wife, and brother murders brother. Bookending the book of Genesis, Joseph’s brothers become Cain to Joseph’s Abel: rather than suffer their earthly father to favor their brother, they decide to eliminate their brother. Only the intervention of Reuben saves them from descending all the way into Cain’s hell-on-earth, and leaves the door open for redemptive forgiveness in the end. Praise be!

1 Corinthians 1 and envy’s poison. Paul encounters similar folk in the Corinthian congregation, people whom he loves but in whom he is profoundly disappointed. The Corinthians (or at least a substantial portion of them) seek their own value outside of Christ, even though He has graciously become all the value they could ever want. 

There’s deep irony in Paul’s words to them: “Consider your own call, brothers and sisters: not many of you were wise by human standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. … But God chose …what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to reduce to nothing things that are” (1 Corinthians 1:26,28). What the Corinthians (or at least a substantial number of them) prize is wisdom, power, and nobility. That fact is played out in the fact that: 1) believers gifted with more spectacular manifestations of the Spirit are touting their superiority over other believers with humbler gifts; 2) rich Christians are suing each other to secure their “rights;” and 3) in lordly fashion the “haves” are making the “have nots” eat separately at what is supposed to be the Lord’s Supper (see 1 Corinthians 6 and 11). 

Hidden deep within the heart of most proud people I’ve known (myself included) lies profound insecurity. Arrogance is often a cover for self-doubt. Blusterers hope no one will call their bluff. We’re afraid that others are smarter, more capable, better — than we are. We’re a mess, and we’re driven by envy and insecurity.  

1 Corinthians and envy’s antidote. Such were the Corinthians. Paul calls them out on their bluster: they are not as wise or powerful or noble as they think. Then, in a remarkably redemptive fashion he directs the envious posers among them to the source of more worth than they could possibly imagine: “[T]he source of your life i[s] Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification and redemption, in order that, as it is written, “Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord” (1 Corinthians 1:30–31). 

Christ our wisdom. Christ has opened up to us the secret of life that is hidden to the philosophers: by the foolishness of the cross, God has killed death by death. T. S. Eliot begins his profoundly Christian poem, The Four Quartets, with a bit of wisdom he finds in ancient Greek poetry, “And the way up is the way down” (hodos anō katō mia kai hōutē), to which he adds, “…the way forward is the way back.” * Lent reminds us to go back to first principles; and the very first principle is that Grace came down to pull us up out of death into life, out of error into truth, and out of sin into righteousness. That is why Christ is our wisdom.

Christ our righteousness. No amount of performance could possibly silence the inner voice that says, “There’s always somebody who does better, works harder, deserves more, and makes you look lesser.” But because Christ has forgiven us, right-wised us, and made us to stand erect before the most exacting tribunal in the universe, there’s nobody of whom we—any of us who belong to Christ—need to be envious. We are the envy of angels: “Do you not know that we are to judge angels—to say nothing of ordinary matters?” (1 Corinthians 6:3). 

Christ our sanctification. Because of Christ, we are clean, not dirty! Easter begins on Saturday night, when at the Great Vigil, we baptize new believers and renew our baptismal covenant. There we are reminded that, with Israel of old, we have crossed through the Red Sea on dry ground. In our baptism, we rediscover that wickedness has been put to flight, sin has been washed away, innocence has been restored to the fallen, joy given back to mourners, pride and hatred have been cast out, and peace and concord have become the rule of life (“Exsultet,” BCP, p. 287). 

Or, as Paul puts it later in this epistle, reminding the Corinthians of the benefits of their baptism: “But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God” (1 Corinthians 6:11). 

Christ our redemption. To “redeem” means “to buy back.” The language of redemption takes central place in Christian discourse because of one crucial fact: God loved us too much to surrender us to the slave-market. To him the thought of our being in thrall to evil for eternity was unthinkable: that forever, we could be under the lash of an infernal version of Yul Brynner’s Egyptian slave drivers, or chained to an everlasting slave-galley like Ben Hur’s, or consigned to a Satan-captained “Middle Passage” like countless Africans sold to slavery in the America — unthinkable! Because he loved us so dearly, the God who so wonderfully created us, he simply could not not yet more wonderfully restore the dignity of our human nature. His love drove him — yes, drove him — to share with us the divine life through the one who humbled himself to share our humanity (adapting BCP, p. 288; and see 2 Peter 1:4).

There is no more perfect antidote to the venom of envy — of sullenly thinking ourselves “lesser than” — than reminding ourselves that Christ is to us wisdom and righteousness and sanctification and redemption.   

Be blessed, in him, this day, 

Reggie Kidd+

Image: Pixabay

* T. S. Eliot, “The Dry Salvages,” III, Four Quartets, pp. 175,196.

Sin is a Stubborn Opponent - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Monday • 3/7/2022
Monday of 1 Lent, Year Two 

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 41; Psalm 52; Genesis 37:1–11; 1 Corinthians 1:1–19; Mark 1:1–13

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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Genesis 37 and envy. Sin is a stubborn opponent. Envy (resentment at the perception of someone else’s advantage) is especially so. Adam and Eve fall because they envy God’s advantage in knowing good and evil in a way they do not. Cain falls because his brother’s sacrifice is favored over his own. When Isaac’s second son Jacob realizes that he is God’s choice for the blessing normally reserved for the first son, Jacob fails to show regard for the temptation to envy that his older brother Esau faces. Instead, Jacob conspires to seize the inheritance by deceit, virtually insuring the envious wrath of his older brother. Jacob is on the receiving end of envy when Jacob’s uncle Laban resents the bounty that God bestows upon Jacob’s sheep-breeding practices.  

Throughout, God gradually draws Jacob into a closer relation to himself; but, sadly, Jacob remains blind to the deadly power of envy. “Now Israel (Jacob) loved Joseph more than any other of his children, because he was the son of his old age; and he had made him a long robe with sleeves. But when his brothers saw that their father loved him more than all his brothers, they hated him, and could not speak peaceably to him” (Genesis 37:3–4). There’s culpability all around: the older brothers who fall into envy’s trap, the younger brother whose ill-advised dream disclosure offers no mitigating language, and, of course, the father who has not spread paternal affection equitably. 

We’ve all known, I’m certain, what it is to feel that others get attention and affection at our expense, and we know it can bring ugly things to the surface. Thank God for not letting us off the hook! And thank God for a Lenten season that allows us to name the evil.

1 Corinthians 1 and pride. Pride (feeling superior to others by virtue of one’s own real or perceived advantage over them) is also a stubborn opponent. It is to an especially prideful community of Christians that Paul writes 1 Corinthians. God has peculiarly blessed them “in speech and knowledge of every kind” so that they “are not lacking in any spiritual gift” (1 Corinthians 1:5,7). So much so that Paul feels he must remind them that they are called “together with all those who in every place call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, both their Lord and ours” (1 Corinthians 1:2b). They’re proud of their prophecies, their tongues, their miracles, their spiritual mentors, their wealth, their liberty of conscience. I’ve been part of churches that felt like I was among the Corinthians, among people who imagined themselves especially kissed by God with gifts and perspectives that set them apart as special. That sense of superiority can be deadly. Throughout this letter, Paul will be reminding the Corinthians that everything they have, they have because of “the grace of God that has been given you in Christ Jesus” (1 Corinthians 1:4). 

During this Lenten season, I am grateful for the call to “self-examination and repentance; by prayer, fasting, and self-denial, and by reading and meditating on God’s holy Word” (BCP, p. 265). I am grateful for Lent’s reminder that God grants his favor despite our lack of merit. 

Mark and our Christus Victor. Happily, we are not left to attempt to kill sin by ourselves. What is especially encouraging in a backdoor way is reading about how the deadly sins of envy and pride afflict faithful followers, like Jacob/Israel and the Corinthian Christians. We have only one Champion, the Lord Jesus Christ. He alone has stood successfully against the assault of every kind of temptation. And while we would, just like Adam and Eve, fail in a garden of delight, he has succeeded. That victory was on our behalf, during 40 days in a wilderness of desolation. This Lenten season is a new opportunity to entrust ourselves to his care, his forgiveness, and his strengthening power. 

Collect of the Day: The First Sunday in Lent. Almighty God, whose blessed Son was led by the Spirit to be tempted by Satan; Come quickly to help us who are assaulted by many temptations; and, as you know the weaknesses of each of us, let each one find you mighty to save; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

Be blessed this day, 

Reggie Kidd+

Image: Rijksmuseum, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

"...All Lives Are Mine" - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Friday • 3/4/2022
Friday of Last Epiphany, Year Two 

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 31; Ezekiel 18:1–4,25–32; Philippians 4:1–9; John 17:9–19

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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Being or Not Being

I once had a co-worker (in a non-church job) who said he was abandoning Christianity. The faith of the Bible was dangerous, he had concluded, because it gave every individual a sense of their own self … their own importance, their own boundaries, their own accountability. He was experimenting with a rival religious system that taught that we all just get absorbed back into “the All … the Great Cosmic Soup.” Somehow, the cash value for him was that he felt no obligation to carry out his supervisor’s instructions. His job didn’t last long. 

Sadly, I never had the chance to get to know my former co-worker well enough to find out what weight he was under that was making him want to escape the responsibility of selfhood. All I know is that my conversations with him made me reflect on what a massive thing it is to accept responsibility for my own self. I am the only “me” I have, and I want to steward it well.

It's only been two days since the imposition of ashes on my forehead. I still feel their imprint, and the weight of the words: “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” It is a serious thing to be made steward of the “me” that I am for the days allotted to me. 

Ezekiel 18 lays down markers on the trail. 

“For I have no pleasure in the death of anyone, says the Lord God” — Ezekiel 18:32a. Let’s start at the end. It’s important to know that we deal with a God who has a certain heart, a certain wiring. The God of people’s imagination is awful. God is either Philip Pullman’s senescent old man who deserves to be dethroned by younger, fresher, cooler spiritual powers, or he is an insincerely smiling Santa who says he wants your wish list, but who’s really making his own naughty-and-nice list. If that’s who we are dealing with, maybe it is better to be a non-being, just an impersonal part of cosmic soup. 

Instead, though, the Bible’s God likens himself to a father who waits longingly for the prodigal child to return, and who grieves over the emotionally constipated child who never dares to rebel but doesn’t really love either (Luke 15). The Bible’s God compares himself to a man who intentionally marries a whore, and when she all too predictably runs off with another man, he pursues her and “allures her” and “speaks tenderly to her” to win her back (Hosea 2:16). Ezekiel says the Bible’s God has set his affections on us, that he has “no delight in the death of” us. 

“Know that all lives are mine; … it is only the person who sins that shall die. … the righteousness of the righteous shall be his own” — Ezekiel 18:4a,c,20b. It is not with an impersonal, faceless mass of humanity that God deals. The Bible calls us “bearers of God’s image,” each of us stamped with his likeness and called to reflect his character out into the world. Each of us distinctly, wonderfully, and uniquely bears that image, stamp, and calling—like it, or not. And Ezekiel soberly lays out the stakes for us: glory or shame, approbation or reprobation, relationship or alienation. What my former co-worker was cutting himself off from was the potential satisfaction of the deepest of emotional needs: to know glory, approbation, and relationship — in other words, the joy of loving and being loved.  

“Cast away from you all the transgressions that you have committed against me, and get yourselves a new heart and a new spirit!” — Ezekiel 18:31. The Bible also recognizes we have all failed the responsibility of selfhood. We have all squandered our inheritance in a strange land or stayed home thinking we are playing it safe but grudgingly and resentfully. We have all gone whoring after gods who are no gods. We all fully deserve to be returned to the dust from which we came, and to be left there. But the Bible also insists that “a new heart and a new spirit” are only as far from us as one simple (if not easy) prayer: “Lord Jesus, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” The Lenten season that lies before us is an opportunity to let that prayer sink itself deeper and deeper and deeper into our consciousness. 

Collect for Ash Wednesday: Almighty and everlasting God, you hate nothing you have made and forgive the sins of all who are penitent: Create and make in us new and contrite hearts, that we, worthily lamenting our sins and acknowledging our wretchedness, may obtain of you, the God of all mercy, perfect remission and forgiveness; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Be blessed this day, 

Reggie Kidd+

Image: iStock

Hope in the Face of Instability - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Thursday • 3/3/2022
Thursday of Last Epiphany, Year Two

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 37; Habakkuk 3:1–18; Philippians 3:12–21; John 17:1–8

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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Yesterday’s Ash Wednesday’s sober words ring especially true these days: “Remember you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” There’s nothing like a once-in-a-hundred-year killer virus to remind us of our frailty. It feels like nature itself is trying to destroy us. There’s nothing like vitriol spewing nationally and sabers rattling internationally to make us conclude that if nature can’t kill us, we are perfectly capable of doing it to ourselves. 

The one place I know to go to find “big picture” help is the Bible.

 Habakkuk 3: to sing in hard times. “…in wrath may you remember mercy” — (Habakkuk 3:2e). The Bible is a book of relentless hope. It refuses to give up on us, because it holds that the God who made us does not give up on us. Habakkuk knows the feel of creation crashing down on us, of enemies at the gates, and of folly and wickedness inside the gates. He knows we fully deserve the wrath. 

Nonetheless, he sings in the face of the fury. In the superscription to Habakkuk 3 is the Hebrew word, Shigionoth, which commentators are pretty sure is a musical instruction. And the chapter ends, “To the leader: with stringed instruments” (Habakkuk 3:19b). Today’s passage is a song the prophet lifts to God. In it, he recites all the calamity God’s people have deserved, from storms of nature to the storm of invading armies. But he remembers the way God’s “storming” presence has conquered his enemies and theirs. Habakkuk remembers the way Yahweh has set limits on the destruction his people have brought down on themselves at the hands of their enemies, and sings, “yet I will rejoice in the Lord; I will exult in the God of my salvation” (Habakkuk 3:18b). 

Philippians 3: to be “taken hold of” by Christ. The apostle Paul is grateful (as we should be too) for a reality that has taken hold of him from above despite himself. He says that the reason he presses on toward the goal of resurrection and the full enjoyment of life in God’s presence is “so that I may take hold of that for which also I was taken hold of by Christ Jesus” (Philippians 3:12 my translation). Grace has laid hold of Paul’s life … and Grace will not let him go. May it be so with you and me. 

Confident of Christ’s gracious grip, Paul (as underserving as he knows himself to be) extends grace to those who haven’t caught up with him theologically in every respect (“…and if in anything you have a different attitude, God will reveal that also to you” — Philippians 3:15b). Here’s a wonderful thing to contemplate: we don’t have to make sure everybody lines up with us exactly. Sometimes Christ calls on us to give each other breathing space, or room to grow. 

At the same time, Paul also calls out those who spurn the cross of Christ. Whether the “enemies of the cross” (Philippians 3:18b) claim to be believers but invent a cross-less and suffering-free version of the faith, or whether these “enemies” outright oppose the faith, Christ’s grace gives Paul the boldness to say their earth-bound perspective is a dead end — quite literally, a dead end. 

John 17: to be prayed for by Christ! But the thing that most deeply protects us from despair in the face of all that would destroy us is simply who Christ is and what he has done for us. There is a special comfort in knowing that Christ’s journey to the cross was bathed in prayer — and to judge from John 17, prayer not so much for himself, but for us: “I am asking on their behalf; I am not asking on behalf of the world, but on behalf of those whom you gave me, because they are yours” (John 17:9). He asks the Father for protection for us, for joy for us, for the ability to be in the world without “belonging to the world,” and for being so solidly grounded in truth that we are “sanctified” in it. 

There is perhaps even more comfort in the knowledge that he didn’t just pray for us on the night of his arrest, but that, according to the writer to the Hebrews, he prays for us now: “He is able also to save forever those who draw near to God through Him, since He always lives to make intercession for them” (Hebrews 7:25 NASB). 

May Christ’s intercession prove strong for us: protecting us from despair over the evil around us, among us, and even in us; giving us grace to extend grace to the struggling; making us bold to hold forth the glory of the cross regardless of the cost; and granting us a heart always to “rejoice in the Lord and exult in the God of our salvation.” 

Be blessed this day, 

Reggie Kidd+

Image: Adapted from Pixabay

Dust is Not All We Are - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Wednesday • 3/2/2022
Ash Wednesday, Year Two

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 32; Psalm 143; Amos 5:6–15; Hebrews 12:1–14; Luke 18:9–14 

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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“God, I thank you that I am not like other people…” (Luke 18:11b). Ash Wednesday’s sobering words, “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return,” leave us no room to compare ourselves with others. Whether our politics are more enlightened, our self-awareness more acute, our financial position (seemingly) more secure, or our compassion for the poor more compassionate, all of us, no less than anyone we might feel ourselves superior to, are dust.

Winston Churchill sought something like immortality through the power of his words. A journalist before he became a politician, Churchill churned out the words, bajillions of them, and well-crafted words at that. He won the Nobel Prize, but not for what he did as Prime Minister of England. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature, “for his mastery of historical and biographical description as well as for brilliant oratory in defending exalted human values.” He won it for his words, and deservedly so. But he is dust, and the destiny of the most eloquent of wordsmiths is accurately forecast in T. S. Eliot’s “Little Gidding II”:

“And I am not eager to rehearse
My thoughts and theory which you have forgotten.
These things have served their purpose: let them be.
So with your own, and pray they be forgiven
By others, as I pray you to forgive
Both bad and good. Last season’s fruit is eaten
And the fullfed beast shall kick the empty pail.
for last year’s words belong to last year’s language
And next year’s words await another voice.” **

Eliot understood that everything we offer is incomplete, imperfect, and impermanent. All of it is tainted: “all that you have done, and been; the shame of motives late revealed, and the awareness of things ill done and done to others’ harm which once you took for exercise of virtue” (Little Gidding II). And so we offer what we offer humbly, penitently, tentatively — knowing that the last word on any offering is His. Our very best offering, in fact, is the publican’s prayer, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!” (Luke 18:13c). 

“…but all who humble themselves will be exalted” (Luke 18:14c). In the Litany of today’s Ash Wednesday service (one of my favorite services of the entire year), we confess our way through the deadly sins: “the pride, hypocrisy, and impatience of our lives” … “our self-indulgent appetites and ways” … “our anger at our own frustration, and our envy of those more fortunate than ourselves” … “our intemperate love of worldly goods and comforts” … “our negligence in prayer and worship, and our failure to commend the faith that is in us” … “our indifference to injustice and cruelty.” *

We make such a confession because we believe that in the end “dust” is not all we are. We do so because we know we were made by the God who redeems “dust.” Our God makes “gold dust” from plain “dust.” Our God surveys a valley of dry bones, gathers the bones, rebuilds the skeletons, gives them new bodies, and breathes new life into them. (Ezekiel 36). Our God raises the dead. Those who acknowledge they are dead before their death, he raises to eternal fellowship and glory. That’s why Jesus says the humble will be exalted. And that’s why, on the far side of the confession of the deadly sins, we dare to ask: 

“Restore us, good Lord, and let your anger depart from us;
Favorably hear us, for your mercy is great.

Accomplish in us the work of your salvation,
That we may show forth your glory in the world.

By the cross and passion of your Son our Lord,
Bring us with all your saints to the joy of his resurrection.” *

Be richly blessed this wondrous Ash Wednesday,

Reggie Kidd+ 

Image: Reggie Kidd

* Book of Common Prayer (1979), pp. 268,269. 

** T. S. Eliot, “Little Gidding II,” from The Four Quartets, in Collected Poems 1909–1962 (NY: Harcourt, 1963, 1991), p. 204. 

Shrove Tuesday - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Tuesday • 3/1/2022
Tuesday of Last Epiphany or Shrove Tuesday, Year Two 

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 26; Psalm 28; Proverbs 30:1–4,24–33; Philippians 3:1–11; John 18:28–38

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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Tomorrow is Ash Wednesday, which makes today Shrove Tuesday. The term “shrove” comes from an old English word “shrive,” which means “absolve.” Thus, it’s a day of confession and absolution. On Shrove Tuesday, some churches burn the previous year’s Palm Sunday ashes for use in the following day’s Ash Wednesday liturgy. The eating of richer and fattier foods (in the Anglican church world, pancakes are the norm) anticipates a leaner and more austere diet during Lent (which accounts for the celebration of Mardi Gras, literally, “Fat Tuesday,” in some traditions).

On Shrove Tuesday, Christ’s followers are invited to take stock of wrongs that need to be corrected in their lives, and to ask God for help in personal reformation. The day has its place in the classic Christian discipline of what Paul calls “dying to sin” and “living to righteousness,” or what older theologians called “mortification and vivification.” 

Today’s Old Testament and Epistle readings provide an opportunity for taking stock and looking to God for help. 

Proverbs 30. Without God’s wisdom, confesses Proverbs 30 author, Agur, son of Jakeh (otherwise unknown to us), we are lost in the universe. We need a word from outside our plane of existence: “Who has ascended to heaven and come down? … Who has established all the ends of the earth? What is the person’s name? And what is the name of the person’s child? Surely you know!” (Proverbs 30:4). Here’s one of the Old Testament’s clearest calls for God to send his Wisdom in person!  

Meanwhile, Agur invites us to observe the created order and learn what life-lessons it holds for us. The first thing that this discipline will require for many of us is that we slow down, sit patiently, and observe. 

Ants, badgers, locusts, and lizards teach profound things about cooperation, creativity, mutual deference (Proverbs 30:24–28), In ironic juxtaposition, the lion’s stateliness and the rooster’s strutting give perspective to prideful aspiration (Proverbs 29–31). For, in the end, self-exaltation, evil schemes, and pressing anger are poor life strategies — the antidote for which is to become “shriven.” 

Philippians 3. Paul’s words here are especially apt for Shrove Tuesday meditation. All of us who think we make it through life on our bona fides, or by building our resumes and portfolios, would do well to heed the apostle who discovered for himself that it’s all “rubbish” (a polite rendering in English of solid waste material that goes into a toilet — Philippians 3:8). 

Seriously, take time to read through Paul’s credentials and his rejection of their worth. The point isn’t to make us rip diplomas off our walls, but to make us understand that those things don’t commend us to God. They certainly don’t make a life. 

Then, read carefully and slowly why Paul can divest himself of his personal and social capital: “I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death, if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead” (Philippians 3:8–11). Knowing is life. And he can indeed be known because, while his body was pierced for our transgressions, and while his dead body was laid in a tomb just outside Jerusalem, nonetheless, he is now the resurrected, ascended, and returning Lord. 

“…and the power of his resurrection…” — Because he is raised from the dead and promises a full resurrection like his when he returns in glory, there’s also a power for living in the now that Christ can and does extend to us. 

“…and the sharing of his sufferings…” Paul’s phrase is “the koinonia, the fellowship, of his sufferings.” This “koinonia of sufferings” is more than the fact that we experience sufferings that are like or similar to his. There is a mysterious way in which, because Christ does in fact live now, he can and does come to us when we suffer in this life. By his Spirit within us, Christ is ever-present to us; he personally and really communes with us and shares our sufferings with us. That’s what Paul is saying. Christ indeed tells us to take up our cross, but he does not ask us to bear it alone. 

Part of what we do on Shrove Tuesday is renounce the “rubbish.” The other part of what we do is ask for more of knowing Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his sufferings. May Christ “shrive” us, and indeed meet us in the renunciation of the “rubbish” and in the asking to know him better. 

Be blessed this day, 

Reggie Kidd+

Image: Pixabay

Preparing for Ash Wednesday - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Monday • 2/28/2022
Monday of Last Epiphany, Year Two 

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 25; Proverbs 27:1–5,10–12; Philippians 2:1–13; John 18:15–18,25–27

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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Collect of the Day: The Last Sunday after the Epiphany: O God, who before the passion of your only-begotten Son revealed his glory upon the holy mountain: Grant to us that we, beholding by faith the light of his countenance, may be strengthened to bear our cross, and be changed into his likeness from glory to glory; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

The Christian experience is not the stoic grey of the denial of appetite, of wanting, of desire. It is the embrace of the wild extremes of the emotional spectrum, from the joyous and radiant golds and whites of the shining sun and the ultimate satisfaction of our hearts’ deepest longings, to the mournful and shatteringly cold blacks of death’s night, a night that is darker than dark, lonelier than lonely, and laden with an eternity of sadness.

Yesterday’s lectionary readings gave us glimpses of a future that is nearly too glorious to imagine: Moses’s face temporarily lit up with the glory of God; Christ’s mountain-top transfiguration recalling his pre-existent glory and anticipating his resurrection glory; and Paul’s celebration of our progressive internal transformation into a permanent glory like that of the resurrected, ascended, and returning Christ (Exodus 34:29–35; Luke 9:28–36; 2 Corinthians 3:12–4:2). 

Preparing for Ash Wednesday. In the middle of this Last Week of Epiphany stands the inescapable and unavoidable hurdle: Ash Wednesday. Ashes form a cross on our foreheads, and we hear haunting words: “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” Remember that there’s no Transfiguration that is not preface to a Crucifixion, nor an Easter without first a Good Friday. On Ash Wednesday, we embrace the dark so we — with Christ — may step into the light. Throughout all of Lent, that is the reality that will be burned into our consciousness. 

With today’s readings, we begin the Lenten journey with Paul’s exquisite hymn to Christ who laid aside his divine prerogatives, to clothe himself in our humanity, suffer a criminal’s ignominious death, and rise to claim “the name that is above every name” (Philippians 2:6–11). All this in the interest of making us into a people who care more about each other than about ourselves (Philippians 2:1–5), and in doing so become lights in a dark world (Philippians 2:15). 

At the same time, today’s readings remind us that we continue to live with our frailty and fallenness:

Living with frailty. Proverbs 27 reminds us how tentative our plans must be, how unsure our grip on our own lives: “Do not boast about tomorrow, for you do not know what a day may bring” (Proverbs 27:1). And, therefore, how humble towards others we must be, and how circumspect in all our relationships: “Let another praise you, and not your own mouth—a stranger, and not your own lips. A stone is heavy, and sand is weighty, but a fool’s provocation is heavier than both. … Better is open rebuke than hidden love … The clever see danger and hide; but the simple go on, and suffer for it” (Proverbs 27:2,3,5,12). 

Living with fallenness. John recounts Peter’s failure even to acknowledge the one who just hours before had washed his feet and called him friend. In doing so, John reminds us how in need of forgiveness we all remain. Peter’s three denials, happily, call forth from the resurrected Jesus a simple threefold query. Jesus doesn’t ask about whether Peter feels guilty about the past or resolute about the future. Simply this: “Do you love me? … Do you love me? … Do you love me?” (John 21:15–17). When we too, like Peter, fail, that’s all he wants to know: “Do you love me?”

Once again, from the Collect for the Day: “…may [we] be strengthened to bear our cross, and be changed into his likeness from glory to glory. … Amen.”

Be blessed this day, 

Reggie Kidd+

Image: Adapted from Pixabay

The Four Voices - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Friday • 2/25/2022

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 February 28.

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 “With Four-Part Harmony and Feeling” 

Maybe you’re like me? On any given Sunday, I may show up for worship worn out or close to giving up or guilty and ashamed – or ready to celebrate. I know there’s an even more diverse range of moods among the people I’m called to lead. How can the worship of Jesus’ people rise from such disparate hearts? How can worship leaders orchestrate such discordant voices? 

“With four-part harmony and feeling.” That’s how Arlo Guthrie introduces the last chorus of his classic story-song “Alice’s Restaurant.” To me, it’s an apt summary of God’s gift to us of the four voices through which he tells us Jesus’ story: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. In his “four part, one song” gift, God provides hope that Jesus can make sweet music of our disparate voices.

It’s not a given that we would have access to Jesus through precisely these four gospels. Some people in the early days of the church experimented with something else. Marcion (mid-2nd century, Rome) championed an edited Luke over the other three — and wound up pitting a New Testament God of love against the Old Testament God of wrath. Epic fail. Tatian (mid-2nd century, Assyria) tried to amalgamate the four gospel accounts into a single narrative — the result was a mish-mash. Less epic, but fail nonetheless. 

Nor have other sources been that helpful. Historians like the Roman Tacitus (2nd century) and the Jewish Josephus (a turncoat during the 1st century war with Rome) do little more than note that Jesus lived. The Gospel of Thomas (2nd century, Egypt) gives us sayings (many quite odd), but little of the story. The Gospel of Judas (2nd century, Egypt) gives us story, but one that just didn’t ring true. 

For the last 200 years or so, scholarship has tried to get behind “the Christ of the Gospels” in quest of “the Historical Jesus.” The problem is that scholarship is done by scholars, and scholars are people. Consistently, those scholars’ quests lead them to a Jesus that looks just like them. Churches have their own reductionistic bent. Protestants filter Jesus through the apostle Paul. Catholics favor the Synoptics (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) because of the Synoptics’ ethical teachings. The Orthodox favor John because of his perceived otherworldliness. 

But the reality is that the four Gospels pressed themselves in concert upon the early church; and the early church wisely let each sing its own part of the song. 

The four winged creatures of the book of Revelation gave the early church its most powerful metaphor for the singular message and fourfold voice of the Gospels: “the first living creature like a lion, the second … like an ox, the third … with the face of a man, and the fourth … like an eagle in flight” (Rev 4:7). Each has eyes for sight, and wings for flight. Each ceaselessly worships: “Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God Almighty” (4:8). 

Each winged creature became associated in the early church’s mind with a particular gospel. Each became a metaphor for its gospel’s angle of vision, its aspect of Christ’s message to be taken to the nations, and its facet of worship. 

Matthew is the winged man because Matthew begins with Christ’s genealogy. Beyond that, Matthew presents Jesus as “gentle and lowly in heart,” and as one especially attuned to the burdens of “all who labor and are heavy laden” and who need “rest for your souls” (11:28,29). Matthew’s Jesus is Emmanuel (“God with us,” 1:23) who teaches in the Sermon on the Mount what our true humanity looks like.   

Mark is the winged lion because Mark begins with John the Baptist roaring like a lion in the desert. Beyond that, in his focus on Christ’s coming “not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many,” Mark shows Christ’s true, Aslan-like power. 

Luke is the winged ox because Luke begins with Zachariah fulfilling priestly duties in the Temple. As Irenaeus (2nd century, Gaul) notes, “For now was made ready the fatted calf about to be immolated for the finding again of the younger son.” Luke, Paul’s traveling companion, is the only Gentile author in the NT. His two volume Luke/Acts is rooted in “secular” history and the ethical sensibilities of the Gentile world. He understands especially well that humanity experiences redemption through Jesus fulfilling OT sacrificial requirements and promises. 

John is the winged eagle because the eagle is a good symbol for Christ’s coming from above as the divine Logos. With his seven “I am” statements (6:35; 8:12; 10:7; 10:11; 11:25; 14:6; 15:1) and Jesus’ crowning claim, “Before Abraham was I am” (8:58), John offers the most exalted view of Christ in the NT. Doubting Thomas speaks for all of us when he confesses: “My Lord and my God.” 

As Jesus reveals himself through his fourfold gospel, he speaks to the diverse needs of his people. Some hear him say, “You will find rest for your souls.” Some hear the Father rejoicing because the fatted calf has been sacrificed and they are welcomed home. Some hear that Christ is their Lion-protector. And we all find ourselves bowing before the one who is the great “I am.” 

Be blessed this day, 

Reggie Kidd+