Play the Long Game - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Wednesday • 6/14/2023 
Wednesday of the Second Week After Pentecost (Proper 5) 

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 72; Deuteronomy 31:30–32:14; 2 Corinthians 11:21b–33; Luke 19:11–27 

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) 

Welcome to Daily Office Devotions, where every Monday through Friday we ask how God might direct our lives from that day’s Scripture readings, as given in the Book of Common Prayer. I’m Reggie Kidd, and I’m grateful to be with you Today is Wednesday of the 2nd Week After Pentecost, and our readings come from Proper 5 in Year 1 of the Daily Office Lectionary.  

Recently, I felt offended by somebody. I don’t know if they even meant it. But I felt it anyway. I don’t think I showed anything on the outside, but inside I spent too much time stewing. I was surprised to find my thoughts going to ingratitude, entitlement, and distrust. Ingratitude: in that moment, all the good things in my life vanished, and all I could see was deficits—like I was a piece of Swiss cheese with more holes than cheese. Entitlement: I thought I deserved more respect than I had been shown (or thought I had been shown). Distrust: where was God when my investment in relationships produced disappointment?  

Then along came today’s passages.  

Deuteronomy: Gratitude for benefits in the wilderness. The Book of Deuteronomy is written in full awareness of the story that is to unfold in Israel’s life, from judges to kingship to exile to restoration. Moses closes this cautionary book with a song that reminds Israel that throughout it all, Yahweh is the God who loves and cares for his people. Just as “He sustained him in a desert land, in a howling wilderness waste,” and just as “he shielded him, cared for him, [and] guarded him as the apple of his eye” (Deuteronomy 32:10), so will he always do.  

With this song, Moses forever plants in God’s people’s minds the images of Yahweh as a loving (and disciplining) Father, as a mother eagle that nourishes and protects her young, and as a great banquet master who provides produce, honey, milk, choice meat, and the finest breads and wines (Deuteronomy 32:13–14).  

In the leanest and hardest times, may Moses’s song keep God’s song alive in us!  

2 Corinthians: The true marks of a minister of Christ. Belonging to Christ means that your pedigree, privilege, and credentialing don’t mean much. In fact, as with the false “super-apostles” Paul is dealing with in Corinth, those things can get in the way. Paul is embarrassed to note that he has just as much going for him in the way of entitlements, but the only thing that entitles him to be heard is that he “out-servants” the “super-apostles”: “Are they ministers (or servants, diakonoi) of Christ? I am talking like a madman—I am a better one” (2 Corinthians 11:23). This last phrase is huper egō, and could colloquially be rendered: “I’m in hyper-drive when it comes to ministering!” Then follows his catalog of sufferings—some external (lashings, shipwrecks…) and some internal (anxiety for churches and empathy for struggling believers).  

Dignity, it seems, does not come from being treated with the worth you think you are entitled to. The entitlement of the Christian life is the privilege of what Paul calls elsewhere “the fellowship of Christ’s sufferings” (Philippians 3:10). There is a knowing of him that comes only in the place of lowliness, only in the place of service, only in the place of renouncing privilege.  

Luke: Playing the long game. What’s interesting about the Parable of the Ten Pounds (the “mina” is a gold coin worth about 100 days of a worker’s wages) is its introduction: “[Jesus] went on to tell a parable, … because [people] supposed that the kingdom of God was to appear immediately” (Luke 19:11). Jesus did not actually teach that the final cataclysm ending history as we know it was right around the corner. He taught that, in a sense, the end of that world had already come—the end of a world in which importance was measured by power and wealth. His cross and resurrection would indeed mean there was “a new sheriff in town.” But his governance would be established in the midst of a world in which things continue, for the time being, under the old rules of domination, pride, license, and exploitation.  

What he taught is that he would leave behind for each of his followers a measure of his resources appropriate to each. Our calling would be to invest in making manifest his alternative kingdom. Risky business! The kind of thing that just might get us “crucified” right along with him: the risk of being misunderstood, misconstrued, rejected, persecuted, even killed. Or — it could be the kind of thing that might see others brought in, and the new reality of God’s kingdom becoming more visible. Either way, in Jesus’s terms, a return on investment.  

Within the framework of this parable, the only sin is to bury fearfully, faithlessly, cowardly, and ungenerously the resources entrusted to us. That sad reality looks different in different people and different situations. The commonality is this pitiful statement: “I was afraid of you, because you are a harsh man; you take what you did not deposit, and reap what you did not sow” (Luke 19:21). These words come to my rescue when, as on the occasion of my recent feeling of being slighted, I want to retreat into a safe place of disengagement. These words force me to ask whether I trust that God is good rather than harsh, and generous rather than miserly. And whether I can trust him to work his good pleasure in the messy and uncertain business of relationships, regardless of consequences. That’s the way Jesus wants us to play the long game.  

Be blessed this day,  

Reggie Kidd+ 

A Healthy Check for All of Us - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Tuesday • 6/13/2023 
Tuesday of the Third Week After Pentecost (Proper 5) 

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 61; Psalm 62; Deuteronomy 30:11–20; 2 Corinthians 11:1–21a; Luke 19:1–10 

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) 

Welcome to Daily Office Devotions, where every Monday through Friday we draw insights from that day’s Scripture readings, as given in the Book of Common Prayer. I’m Reggie Kidd, and I’m grateful to be with you. Today is Tuesday of the 2nd Week After Pentecost, and our readings come from Proper 5 of Year 1 in the Daily Office Lectionary.  

In Deuteronomy, Moses calls for, and in Luke, Zaccheus exemplifies, simplicity of vision and purity of passion. What we find in 2 Corinthians is that these are the very things Paul has worked to instill in the Corinthian church. Paul sees a threat to the simplicity and purity of faith in the different view of Jesus, of the gospel, and of the Holy Spirit being foisted on the Corinthians by false teachers who claim to have greater credentials and deeper knowledge than Paul.  

Sometimes our enemies make us better. In this case, Paul is pushed, for the first time in his writings, to portray the church as the bride of Christ. She is betrothed to Christ, but her chastity is being threatened by seducers: “I feel a divine jealousy for you, for I promised you in marriage to one husband, to present you as a chaste virgin to Christ. But I am afraid that as the serpent deceived Eve by its cunning, your thoughts will be led astray from a sincere and pure devotion to Christ” (2 Corinthians 11:2–3).  

In painting this portrait, Paul recalls the Bible’s long story arc about God marrying his people to himself. Later, and in a context of less pressing circumstances, Paul elaborates on the metaphor of Christ as Groom and the Church as Bride, composing a lovely description of the mystery of the love relationship God has been building between himself and redeemed humanity (Ephesians 5).  

For now, though, Paul utilizes this powerful image of Eve’s deception to warn the church against being seduced by smooth-tongued pseudo-teachers. We can only dimly make out the contours of their teachings: 

Another Jesus. Paul’s opponents exude an air of superiority. Theirs is a Jesus who promotes pride rather than humility, and competitiveness rather than kindness. This “other Jesus” is a chaplain for the successful—a Jesus who has no place for the “nobodies,” and who shoves the “have nots” to the rear of the line (1 Corinthians 1:28; 11:22).  

A different spirit. Thus, for Paul, the chief mark of the Spirit of God is love. For the Corinthians, it’s power. Paul has accepted financial support from the impoverished Macedonian church, but has refused support from the prosperous Corinthian church. Paul knows that the Macedonians give because they love, but that the Corinthians give because they want to put Paul under obligation to themselves. The Corinthians understand the Spirit of God when the Spirit inspires tongues and creates miracles. But they misunderstand the Spirit when the Spirit lovingly says “No” to their manipulative ways.  

A different gospel. Accordingly, theirs is a gospel that is unfamiliar with “the foolishness of the cross” (1 Corinthians 1:18-25). Their gospel has little room for Paul’s: “…Christ died for our sins…,” much less his “…he became sin for us…” (compare 1 Corinthians 15:3 with 2 Corinthians 5:21). They would be unable to make sense of the Book of Common Prayer’s Palm Sunday prayer: “Mercifully grant that we, walking in the way of the cross, may find it none other than the way of life and peace; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.” 

The devil: posing as an angel of light. Though the false message seems flattering and appealing to the Corinthians’ ego, Paul points out that it is ultimately degrading. He says the false “super-apostles” are “deceitful workers, disguising themselves as apostles of Christ. And no wonder! Even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. So it is not strange if his ministers also disguise themselves as ministers of righteousness” (2 Corinthians 11:13–14). These false teachers, insists Paul, are enslaving the Corinthians, exploiting them, taking advantage of them, behaving arrogantly toward them, and slapping them in the face (2 Corinthians 11:20). Behind the veneer of light (their Jesus for winners, their spirit of self-aggrandizement, their Cross-less gospel) lies a deep abyss of darkness. The logic was well captured in C. S. Lewis’s sketch of the mind of the Devil in his The Screwtape Letters: “We (devils) want cattle who can finally become food; He (God) wants servants who can finally become sons. We want to suck in, He wants to give out. We are empty and would be filled; He is full and flows over.” 

Today’s passage presents a healthy check for all of us: is our Jesus a Jesus of humility, or of pride? Does the Spirit within us prompt love for others, or put us on a quest for power or control or influence for ourselves? Does our gospel have as its centerpiece, “Christ died for our sins”? In the wrong answer to these questions lies the path to death, in the right answer, fullness of life.  

Be blessed this day,  

Reggie Kidd+ 

Christ's Kindness - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Monday • 6/12/2023 
Monday of the Second Week After Pentecost (Proper 5)  

This morning’s Scriptures are: Deuteronomy 30:1–10; 2 Corinthians 10:1–18; Luke 18:31–43 

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) 

Welcome to Daily Office Devotions, where every Monday through Friday we explore that day’s Scripture readings, as given in the Book of Common Prayer. I’m Reggie Kidd. Thanks for joining me. This is Monday of the 2nd Week After Pentecost, and our readings come from Proper 5 of Year 1 in the Daily Office Lectionary.  

2 Corinthians and accusations against Paul. It’s not enough that Paul is having to call the Corinthians to account for their tardiness in generosity. In addition, he is embroiled in a power struggle with some notables in the congregation. These individuals find Paul’s tactics to be worldly and manipulative (remember his reneging on his promise to visit them). They allege that it is cowardice that is keeping him away. He writes bold letters from a distance, they contend, to compensate for his weakness in person. They find his rhetorical skills, frankly forgettable: “His letters are weighty and strong, but his bodily presence is weak, and his speech contemptible” (2 Corinthians 10:10b).  

Someone else might have flipped the table on these folks, and said, “Why am I wasting my time on the likes of you? I shake the dust off my sandals!” Or they might have decided to come in with guns blazing: “Boldness!? Boldness you want? Batten down the hatches, because here I come, and I’m bringing the heat!!” 

Instead, Paul sees a teaching moment.  

Restraint and the kindness of Christ. In a former life, Paul might have responded differently than he does. One could easily imagine his zeal leading him to come after the Corinthians the same way he had first begun to hunt down the followers of Christ in Damascus. But Christ has taught him a different approach, described here in four gorgeous terms. He says that the “meekness” (praütēs) and “kindness” (epieikeia) of Christ have taught him to be “humble” (tapeinos), even in his apostolic “confidence” (pepoithēsis—2 Corinthians 10:1–2). Christ has dealt with Paul with a meekness, a kindness, and a humility that was altogether opposite to what his pride and ruthlessness had merited. As a result, with all the confidence of his apostolic calling, Paul has learned how to measure his words and actions. Here is a “new creation” way of doing things. May you and I take note! 

Building up and tearing down. Paul insists his lone goal is to build these people up: “…our authority, which the Lord gave for building you up and not for tearing you down…” (2 Corinthians 10:8b). This language of “building up” (oikodomē) is the very language he had used in 1 Corinthians to describe what everybody is supposed to do with their spiritual gifts: use them, not for ego-gratification, but for other-gratification. The goal of “building up” is, moreover, to be a life principle that informs every decision: “All things are lawful for me, but not all things build up (my translation; oikodomein, usually translated “edify,” as in “to build an edifice,” or “to be beneficial,” or “to be helpful”— see 1 Corinthians 6:12a; 10:23a).  

Sometimes before a new, beautiful, and useful edifice can go up, an old, decrepit, and useless edifice must first come down. Paul labors with his words—whether in person, or in writing—to help the Corinthians see that there’s some demolition work that has to be done among them. People there are overly awed by secular credentials matched to impressive displays of hyper-spirituality (a deadly combination). They have picked up the notion that Christ is for the winners. They are “king’s kids.” They already rule with Christ: “Already you have all you want! Already you have become rich! Without us you have become kings! And would that you did reign, so that we might share the rule with you!” (see 1 Corinthians 4:8–13; 11:22). And, accordingly, they conclude that Paul’s weaknesses, his ailments, and his sufferings are a sign of God’s lack of blessing on his ministry.  

The Corinthians need to see that the opposite is true. Paul wants the Corinthian congregation to ask themselves: What would the life of Christ look like among us? Does he call us to wear the crown of glory in the present life, or does he call us to take up a cross? Who loves us the way Christ loves us? Paul, or these posers? Paul is certain that in the end the Corinthians will conclude that it is Paul who has their best interests at heart, not his detractors. That is the brief Paul began to build in 1 Corinthians, and it is a brief he brings to its conclusion in these closing chapters of 2 Corinthians. To look ahead, he is putting before them a proposition and a test: 

The proposition: “For he was crucified in weakness, but lives by the power of God. For we also are weak in him, but in dealing with you we will live with him by the power of God.”  

The test: “Examine yourselves, to see whether you are in the faith. Test yourselves” (2 Corinthians 13:4–5).  

Even so, we ought not forget that Paul’s ultimate aim is not to tear down, but to build up.  Nor ought we forget that Paul’s “hope is that, as your faith increases, our sphere of action among you may be greatly enlarged” (2 Corinthians 10:15b). That’s why his final words to them will be words of blessing: “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all” (2 Corinthians 13:14).  

Collect for Proper 5: O God, from whom all good proceeds: Grant that by your inspiration we may think those things that are right, and by your merciful guiding may do them; 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+ 

Mercy of the Cross - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Friday • 6/9/2023 
Friday of the First Week After Pentecost (Proper 4) 

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 40; Psalm 54; Deuteronomy 26:1–11; 2 Corinthians 8:16–24; Luke 18:9–14  

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) 

Welcome to Daily Office Devotions, where every Monday through Friday we bring to our lives that day’s Scripture readings, as given in the Book of Common Prayer. I’m Reggie Kidd, and I’m grateful to be with you this Friday of the 1st Week After Pentecost. We are in Proper 4 of Year 1 of the Daily Office Lectionary.  

Could there be a more hell-scented prayer than this one: “God, I thank you that I am not like other people…” (Luke 18:11b)? I remember being asked in my pre-Christian days what there was about me that might commend me to God if I were to face him. My answer was a soft version of the Pharisee’s sentiment: “Well, I’m not perfect, but I’m not as bad as the next guy.” What I couldn’t admit out loud was that I thought there was quite a lot about me that should make me look good in God’s eyes. Several conversations later, I concluded that I was quite wrong—that I was no less grasping, no less profligate, no less self-centered than anybody I could imagine.  

The tax collector’s prayer became mine. “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!” There are a couple of features of the tax collector’s (and my) prayer that deserve a closer look.  

Image: The Pharisee and the Publican (Le pharisien et le publicain) by James Tissot, 1886-94, Opaque watercolor over graphite on gray wove paper, Brooklyn Museum. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons. 

This request for mercy employs a distinct vocabulary. The tax collector doesn’t use the normal term to ask for mercy, eleēson (e.g., Luke 18:38). Instead, he asks hilasthēti, which is, literally and etymologically “smile upon me.” He’s come to pray in the temple, the building that houses “the mercy seat,” which in Greek is hilastērion (literally and etymologically “the smiling place”). The hilastērion is the place where God’s wrath is satisfied by the annual atoning sacrifice that covers sins (see Leviticus 16). The tax collector asks for the mercy that comes from the shed blood of another. His prayer becomes a subtle hint as to why Luke’s gospel (who alone recounts this parable) is associated with the sacrificial ox. The cross of Jesus will become the tax collector’s and our hilastērion, our (irony totally intended) “smiling place.”   

 What’s more, the tax collector doesn’t merely refer to himself as “a sinner.” No, he says, “Be merciful to me, the sinner” (all the translations ignore the definite article that’s in the Greek). I don’t understand the translators’ thinking, but I do think I understand the tax collector’s mindset. So aware is he of his own failings—failings that have led him to assume a posture “standing far off … not even look[ing] up to heaven, but beating his breast”—that he cannot see himself in any other light than as though he were the worst sinner in all the human race.  

Characteristic of Christian faith is that that awareness of the depth of one’s sin, and appreciation of the depth of the mercy of the cross, come in one fell swoop. That’s the way it happened for the tax collector. That’s the way it happened for me. I pray it happens for all of us.  

Be blessed this day,  

Reggie Kidd+  

God's New Creation - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Thursday • 6/8/2023 
Thursday of the First Week After Pentecost (Proper 4) 

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 50; Deuteronomy 16:18–20; 17:14–20; 2 Corinthians 8:1–16; Luke 18:1–8 

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) 

Welcome to Daily Office Devotions, where every Monday through Friday we consider some aspect of that day’s Scripture readings, as given in the Book of Common Prayer. I’m Reggie Kidd, and I’m grateful to be with you. We are in the 1st Week After Pentecost, and our readings come from Proper 4 of Year 1 in the Daily Office Lectionary.  

Since the Fall, it’s become a confused and confusing world. It really has. According to the Bible’s story line, it won’t always be this way. And, praise be, the “new creation” that has been anticipated for the longest time has already invaded the present: “If anyone is in Christ, there is new creation. The old has passed away. Behold, the new has come!” (2 Corinthians 5:17). Christ’s life, death, resurrection, ascension, and present position at the right hand of the Father mean that history has turned a corner.  

Image: Une Loterie philantropique, Honoré Daumier (France, Marseilles, 1808-1879), Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons 

Accommodations to the fall are still in place, though. They are temporary, but they are still necessary.  

Luke: on persistence in prayer. So, even in our prayer lives, we need Jesus’s parable of the unjust judge. We need it, but not because God is disinclined to listen to us and can only be made to hear us because we pester him. No, we need this parable because we do not know how his counsels work or what his timeline looks like. We need to be persistent—as though he were hard of hearing and disinclined to do the right thing—even though we know he is not hard of hearing or disinclined to do the right thing. We need to ask and keep on asking—because prayer reminds us to whom we properly appeal for relief, for resolution, for answers. 

Deuteronomy: on “judges” and “kings.” Similarly, in this fallen world, we know that “judges” do not judge justly nor do “kings” accept that God has “set them above” their people, yet not so that they may “exalt themselves over” their people. For that very reason, it is a very good thing to have standards of leadership set out in Scripture as points of accountability. We accept it as our duty to urge adherence to those standards, because we know the world works better that way, because people flourish that way, and because eventually, in God’s own timing, that’s the way it’s going to be.  

2 Corinthians: on caring and sharing. Even in the church—the place that presently manifests God’s “new creation”— the confused and confusing effects of the fall have to be countered. Paul faces a huge instance here in 2 Corinthians chapters 8 and 9 as he addresses the Corinthians about their wealth.  

It’s easy to get the wrong impression about the Corinthians. With a rhetorical flourish at the beginning of 1 Corinthians, Paul makes it sound to many readers like Corinth is home to an impoverished church: “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).  

Reality is different than appearance, however. In the first place, all those “not many” phrases could very well be read “are not many?” (Apologies, it’s a curious feature of Greek.) In the second place, this church is plagued with problems of wealthy people throwing their weight around (whether in the minority or not): rich Christians are suing each other, and the “haves” are making the “have nots” eat separately at their supposed Lord’s Supper (see 1 Corinthians 6 and 11).  

The apostle Paul has spent the better part of this his third missionary journey among the churches in Greece and western Asia Minor soliciting relief money. He has been raising funds from these mostly Gentile churches to provide for impoverished Jewish Christians in Judea. A combination of self-renunciation (see Acts 2:45; 4:32) and famine (see Acts 11:27–30) has left the Jerusalem mother church in dire straits. Paul sees the opportunity both to address the physical need and to help Gentile and Jewish believers realize their oneness in Christ.  

Delicately and diplomatically, Paul seeks to reshape their understanding of how to use their wealth in light of God’s “new creation” that has taken hold in their lives. In 2 Corinthians Paul confronts them with the fact that a year earlier they made a commitment to support the impoverished church in Jerusalem and environs, but have not yet come through with their pledge. For two chapters of the densest Greek he is ever to pen, Paul discusses the topic of money without ever using the term. He employs various euphemisms instead. These chapters are especially redolent with the term “grace” (charis), referring to the theological concept (2 Corinthians 8:9), and as a stand-in term for “giving” money — 2 Corinthians 8:1,4,6).   

Paul is at pains to let the Corinthians (and us) know several things: 

We give because we have been given unto. “For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich” (2 Corinthians 8:9 RSV).  

We give as part of a whole Body of Christ because when one suffers all suffer (1 Corinthians 12:26), and because the whole Body works together to take care of itself (as Paul will later explain in the fourth chapter of his letter to the Ephesians).  

God looks more for our desire to give than for the gift itself—though not the desire without the gift, either. (Thus, Paul’s delicate urging of the Corinthians to follow through on the pledge that they had made a year earlier.)    

When it comes to “haves” giving to support “have nots,” it’s important to build in safeguards against condescending paternalism. There is a mutuality, a reciprocity, even an “equality” (isotēs) to be worked toward and understood. For the moment, these wealthy Greeks are the “haves,” and their impoverished Jewish brothers and sisters are the “have nots.” There’s no guarantee it will always be that way. Nor is it possible to put a price on the value of Jewish believers’ prayers for these recent Gentile converts. Priceless, in fact!  

Not to mention the value to the whole world of the church’s modeling “new creation.” Since the Garden, the world has been devolving into rival nations, warring factions, mutually loathing ethnicities. Since the cross, where Christ united in himself Jew and Gentile, God has set forth his church as the place where those rivalries, and that warring and loathing end. Doubly priceless!! 

Be blessed this day,  

Reggie Kidd+  

Matters of Morality Matter - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Wednesday • 6/7/2023 
Wednesday of the First Week After Pentecost (Proper 4) 

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 119:49–72; Deuteronomy 13:1–11; 2 Corinthians 7:2-16; Luke 17:20–37 

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) 

Welcome to Daily Office Devotions, where every Monday through Friday we ask how God might direct our lives from that day’s Scripture readings, as given in the Book of Common Prayer. I’m Reggie Kidd, and I’m grateful to be with you Today is Wednesday of the 1st Week After Pentecost, and our readings come from Proper 4 in Year 1 of the Daily Office Lectionary.  

One of the reasons for immersing ourselves in the Bible’s story, in its world, and in its ethos is that the Bible challenges so many basic presuppositions of our lives. That’s especially on display in today’s readings.  

Deuteronomy: don’t just look, but listen. Just because a “prophet’s” words come true, the prophet is not necessarily telling the truth. “If prophets or those who divine by dreams appear among you and promise you omens or portents, and the omens or the portents declared by them take place, and they say, ‘Let us follow other gods’ (whom you have not known) ‘and let us serve them, you must not heed the words of those prophets or those who divine by dreams…’” (Deuteronomy 13:1–3a).  

Moses’s words would call upon a generation like ours that values pragmatism above everything to ask deeper questions. Not just, does such-and-such work, but is it true? A medieval heresy taught that forgiveness and freedom from guilt (a good result…) could be bought by donations to the church (…based on a lie). Contemporary theologies can be just as bad. One faulty approach substitutes action for prayer—action is good, prayer-bereft spirituality is mere humanism. Another faulty approach promotes self-absorbed prayer, with no concern for the welfare of others. A robust sense of self should indeed come from knowing God, but there’s no knowing God apart from love for neighbor. Each approach gets the results it is after, but those results are based on lies that need to give way to deeper truths.  

Apostle Paul, Jan Lievens , Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons 

2 Corinthians: on godly grief. Matters of morality and immorality matter. Bedroom ethics are not merely private concerns. They affect the whole community. In fact, the Corinthians themselves had taken pride in the liberated ethic that permitted a man to have intimate relations with his stepmother (see 1 Corinthians 5). The Corinthians likely supposed the couple to be expressing what it is to live in the new eschatological reality, “new creation” where there is no “male and female” (see Galatians 3:28; 5:16; 2 Corinthians 5:17). It’s likely that they even thought they were honoring Paul. With a painful letter between 1 and 2 Corinthians (which we do not have), Paul has risked alienating a church he feels quite close to in order to get them to address that delicate situation. In this chapter of 2 Corinthians, Paul expresses relief and joy over Titus’s report that they had repented with “a godly grief” (2 Corinthians 7:9). There’s reason for all of us to take a closer look at God’s design for human intimacy, not just for ourselves, but for our churches and for our society.   

Luke: where is the Kingdom? Much of what Jesus says in today’s passage in Luke he says elsewhere as well. What stands out about this particular passage, though, is whose question prompts the discourse: the Pharisees. Jesus lays out the end times game plan for his followers. But first he gives skeptics and opponents a chance to reconsider their skepticism about him and their opposition to him. “And when he was demanded of the Pharisees, when the kingdom of God should come, he answered them and said, The kingdom of God cometh not with observation: Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you’” (Luke 17:20–21 King James Version).  

This last statement, “for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you,” is not a saying that appears in any of the other gospels. And I have used the KJV because it preserves the more literal translation of the term “within” (entos). It’s important to keep in mind whom Jesus is addressing: the Pharisees, his opponents. Modern translators sense the incongruity of Jesus telling his antagonists that the Kingdom was inside them. They were on the outside looking in. So modern translations generally render the phrase along the lines of “in your midst,” or “among you” — i.e., (to paraphrase) “standing here in front of you, in your very midst, is the Kingdom personified in me.” That makes sense, except that this would be a unique use of the Greek entos, which really denotes inwardness.  

I rather like the suggestion of some students of Luke (e.g., Darrell Bock and Max Zerwick) that Jesus means “within you” as in “within your grasp (if only you would take hold of it!).” To paraphrase (yet again): “You are not going to find it by looking to the heavens and into ancient texts, for ‘it cometh not with observation.’” But, in fact, as modern translators with their “in your midst” or “among you” translation, rightly note, the Kingdom stands right in front of them in the person of Jesus. With his “the kingdom of God is within you,” Jesus puts the question to them: will you not search your hearts and find there the slightest inclination to see and embrace the Kingdom — in me?   

The question comes to all of us: do we spend anxious hours searching news sources for the latest signs of the apocalypse? Conversely, do we expend our life’s energy trying to make the Kingdom happen through our own efforts? Or instead, will we take a look within and see there the world of need that Jesus has come to take dominion over, to begin “new creation” in, to set right again, to heal, and to reorient in service to him? 

Be blessed this day,  

Reggie Kidd+ 

Vision of Christ’s Upside-down Kingdom - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Tuesday • 6/6/2023 
Tuesday of the First Week After Pentecost (Proper 4) 

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 45; Deuteronomy 12:1–12; 2 Corinthians 6:3–13(14–7:1); Luke 17:11–19 

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) 

Welcome to Daily Office Devotions, where every Monday through Friday we draw insights from that day’s Scripture readings, as given in the Book of Common Prayer. I’m Reggie Kidd, and I’m grateful to be with you. Today is Tuesday of the 1st Week After Pentecost, and our readings come from Proper 4 of Year 1 in the Daily Office Lectionary.  

Taken together, today’s readings in Deuteronomy and 2 Corinthians put before us the tremendous responsibility of saying “No” and “Yes.”  

Deuteronomy calls for the destroying of idols, and for the renouncing of an independent spirit when it comes to the worship of Yahweh. Specifically, Moses forbids refusing to come to “the place” that Yahweh will choose for his worship: “But you shall seek the place that the Lord your God will choose out of all your tribes as his habitation to put his name there. You shall go there, … And you shall eat there in the presence of the Lord your God, you and your households together, rejoicing in all the undertakings in which the Lord your God has blessed you” (Deuteronomy 12:5,7).  

This command looks forward to God’s choice of Jerusalem and its future temple as the center for his people’s worship. Together there in God’s house, a redeemed people make their offerings (including their, ahem, tithes) in utter gratitude for deliverance from slavery. Together there they eat and drink in the delighted presence of one another and in the delightful presence of the “beauty of the holiness” of God (Psalm 29:2).  

Paul has come to understand that the church is now God’s new temple: “For we are the temple of the living God; as God said, ‘I will live in them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people’” (2 Corinthians 6:16, quoting Leviticus 26:11). This new temple is made up of people within whom and among whom the Spirit of God (that is, God himself) dwells. The church is sacred space that is not to be violated, profaned, taken for granted, or used for the building up of egos or personal fortunes.  

The situation on the ground in Corinth. Paul has been taken aback by the accusations that have come at him from the Corinthian church, his own spiritual children. Some people have risen among them claiming to be “super-apostles” (2 Corinthians 11:5), alleging that their miracles are more spectacular, their credentials more superlative, and their personal impressiveness more the mark of the victorious Christ.  

In fact, they have infected the Corinthian church with a spirit of triumphalism that claims to be living in the power of Christ’s resurrection, but which Paul knows to be bogus. He names these polluters of the church for what they are: “false apostles, deceitful workers, disguising themselves as apostles of Christ. And no wonder! Even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. So it is not strange if his ministers also disguise themselves as ministers of righteousness” (2 Corinthians 11:13–15).   

Their chief complaints against Paul are that he is unreliable (remember that he had changed travel plans), weak in demeanor, and unimpressive in rhetoric. He is at pains, therefore, to let the Corinthians know that Christ’s life is manifest in the very places where the super-apostles have gotten it wrong. The triumph of Christ lies in endurance of “afflictions, hardships, calamities, beatings, imprisonments, riots, labors, sleepless nights, hunger” (2 Corinthians 6:4b–5). The character of Christ is revealed in “purity, knowledge, patience, kindness, holiness of spirit, genuine love, truthful speech, and the power of God” (2 Corinthians 6:6–7a). Christ’s kingdom is manifest not when its subjects parade themselves as “winners,” but rather when they “are treated as impostors, and yet are true; as unknown, and yet are well known; as dying, and see—we are alive; as punished, and yet not killed; as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, and yet possessing everything” (2 Corinthians 6:8b–10).  

And so, the necessary “No” and “Yes”:  

“No” to a religion of “whatever,” of “to whom it may concern.” “No” to using God for self-aggrandizement or the propping up of self-image. “No” to relationships that blur the line between good and evil, justice and injustice, lawfulness and lawlessness. Or, as Paul puts it in 2 Corinthians 7:1, “no” to relationships and practices that “defile the body” (like sexual immorality or drunkenness or gluttony), or to relationships and practices that “defile the spirit” (like alliances of bitterness or envy, or practices that hybridize or dilute the faith).  

“Yes” to worshiping God, and doing so his way. “Yes” to a commitment to Jesus that is just like the wedding vow: “for better or for worse, for richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health.” “Yes” to spiritual relationships that promote the true faith, and that support godly, just, and holy living.  

These are some of the most arresting and poignant words Paul ever wrote. I hope they got the Corinthians’ attention! They certainly got the attention of the artist Vincent Van Gogh, who built his own life around the phrase “as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing.” The result was an artistic corpus presenting one of the most radiant visions of Christ’s upside-down Kingdom anybody has ever seen. I pray that you and I catch that vision.  

Be blessed this day, 

Reggie Kidd+ 

The Arrival of an Anticipated Moment - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Monday • 6/5/2023
Monday of the First Week After Pentecost (Proper 4)  

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 41; Psalm 52; Deuteronomy 11:13–19; 2 Corinthians 5:11–6:2; Luke 17:1–10 

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) 

Welcome to Daily Office Devotions, where every Monday through Friday we explore that day’s Scripture readings, as given in the Book of Common Prayer. I’m Reggie Kidd. Thanks for joining me. This is Monday of the 1st Week After Pentecost, and our readings come from Proper 4 of Year 1 in the Daily Office Lectionary.  

Knowing what time it is! I hope I never outlive the thrill at the arrival of a long-anticipated special moment. Several from my life have stuck with me through the years. My first at-bat in high school baseball, my wedding day, the acceptance of my dissertation, my ordination to the ministry. I hope there are more days like those still to come!  

Paul’s special sense of time is that Christ’s coming inaugurated a whole era of special days. Every day is an amazing, awesome, astounding “now”: “Behold, now is the acceptable time; behold, now is the day of salvation” (2 Corinthians 6:2b). Paul deeply inhabited the Bible’s world; it defined his reality in a way that is difficult for secularized (post)moderns to comprehend. But it did. And one of his chief realizations on the road to Damascus was that every moment of history since the descent of darkness in Genesis 3 had been a preparation for the breaking in of the “new creation” ushered in by Jesus of Nazareth, who though recently crucified, now stood before him, risen and ascended.  

My years in Little League and youth baseball leagues had made me ready for my first plate appearance in high school … and all the fun that followed. Similarly, Paul realized that all the biblical sagas about the patriarchs, the judges, the kings, and the prophets had been leading up to this: “So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!” (2 Corinthians 5:17).  

An ambassadorial voice. A calamitous and unthinkable thing had happened. All the evil in the world — whether experienced by victim or perpetrator, whether as despair or arrogance, as forlornness or domination —all of it had been absorbed by God’s own delegate, his own Son, on the Cross. On Calvary’s Cross, one who “knew no sin became sin” (2 Corinthians 5:21). The result: “one died for all; therefore all have died. And he died for all, so that those who live might live no longer for themselves, but for him who died and was raised for them” (2 Corinthians 5:14).  

Christ died for all, and all have died in him. That is a staggering claim. It’s a claim of universal import, and brings with it a claim to universal dominion: “even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus... (Ephesians 2:6), . But more fundamentally, it is a claim of universal love. Which is why Paul says Christ’s love compels him to tell its story: “For the love of Christ urges us on….” (2 Corinthians 5:14).  

So important is the good news of Christ’s love that God commissions Paul (and all of us as well) as ambassadors: “So we are ambassadors for Christ…” (2 Corinthians 5:20a). When ambassadors speak, it is as representatives of the one who sent them, responsible for speaking directly. That is the thrust of the rest of the verse I just cited (and is better perceived in the more literal NASB translation): “…as though (Gk hōs) God were making an appeal through us; we beg you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God” (2 Corinthians 5:20b).  

The thing we ambassadors have to keep in mind is that we don’t speak for ourselves. We don’t get to tinker with the message (something to ponder for another time). Nor do we have the option of keeping the message to ourselves, as though it were our own privileged and private mystical knowledge.  

A vicarious representation. When I was in seminary, I remember asking one of my professors about the meaning of a verse in the previous chapter of this epistle. “Sir, Paul says that he preaches ‘Jesus Christ as Lord and ourselves as your servants for Jesus’s sake.’ Could that possibly mean that our transformed lives are part of the message, part of what testifies to the truth of Jesus?” The professor’s reply was: “Absolutely not. The message is the message. Period.” I wasn’t completely convinced my professor caught Paul’s nuance, but I let it go, and tucked the question away.  

The more I’ve thought about it, the more deeply I’ve read Scripture, and the longer I’ve served in the church, the more firmly I’ve concluded the professor was wrong. One big reason for thinking that Paul does mean to make our lives part of the message is what he says at the end of chapter 5. Paul concludes that the purpose of Christ’s becoming sin for us on the Cross was “so that we might become the  righteousness of God in Him” (2 Corinthians 5:21). Here’s what New Testament theologian Richard Hays says about this verse in his The Moral Vision of the New Testament:  

[Paul] does not say “that we might know about the righteousness of God,” nor “that we might believe in the righteousness of God,” nor even “that we might receive the righteousness of God.” Instead, the church is to become the righteousness of God: where the church embodies in its life together the world-reconciling love of Jesus Christ, the new creation is manifest. The church incarnates the righteousness of God (p.24).* 

It’s not that we don’t need first to “know about,” “believe in,” or “receive” God’s righteousness. It is that Paul is looking beyond that wonderful reality here. He’s looking to the extraordinary power of that righteousness—the very character of God—becoming incarnate in us. For, if the world is going to see the meaning of Christ’s taking the world’s sins upon his shoulders, the world is going to see it in the way we—his followers—embody and champion the cause of justice and righteousness in this unjust and unrighteous world.  

The God who cannot otherwise be seen is seen in the bearers of his image of justice — as well as of mercy and holiness and goodness and compassion and wisdom. It’s what New Testament theologian Michael Gorman fittingly calls “becoming the gospel.”**  

Be blessed this day as you, by the grace of God, do just that! 

Reggie Kidd+ 

*Richard B. Hays, The Moral Vision of the New Testament: Community, Cross, New Creation: A Contemporary Introduction to New Testament Ethics (HarperCollins, 1996), p. 24 (emphasis in the original). 

**For more on this theme, see Michael Gorman, Becoming the Gospel: Paul, Participation, and Mission (Eerdmans, 2015)  

Do Not Lose Heart - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Friday • 6/2/2023 •
Friday of the Week of Pentecost (Proper 3) 

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 31; Deuteronomy 5:1–22; 2 Corinthians 4:1–12; Luke 16:10–17(18) 

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) 

Welcome to Daily Office Devotions, where every Monday through Friday we bring to our lives that day’s Scripture readings, as given in the Book of Common Prayer. I’m Reggie Kidd, and I’m grateful to be with you this Friday of the Week of Pentecost. We are in Proper 3 of Year 1 of the Daily Office Lectionary.  

Today’s readings begin with the Ten Commandments. The Commandments can be dispiriting apart from Paul’s maxim “the letter kills, but the Spirit makes alive.” What we have to understand is that at their deepest level the Commandments are not about “the letter,” as though they were aiming at external conformity. Rather, they point ahead of time to what the Spirit would one day enable: heart engagement.  

Deuteronomy: the deeper dimension of the law. In Deuteronomy, the Commandments come to people who have already been redeemed, not to people who are looking for a means of redemption. That’s why they are prefaced with “I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery” (Deuteronomy 5:6).  

The Commandments are a means by which redeemed people share the benefits of redemption with others. That’s why allowing others to rest on the Sabbath is one way Israel celebrates its release from bondage in Egypt: “You shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God brought you out of there by a mighty hand and by an outstretched arm; therefore the Lord your God commanded you to observe the sabbath day” (Deuteronomy 5:15). The logic could be applied throughout: our lives, our families, our property, our integrity were restored by the exodus, and so we care about the lives, families, property, and integrity of others. Above all, the Commandments aim to enthrall people with God and with his gracious provision so they can be free from envy, and thus be free to love.  

Image: Ananias Restoring the Sight of St. Paul, Pietro da Cortana. Public Domain. 

Luke: affirming the law’s deeper intent. Jesus, of course, had a keen eye to the Law’s true and spiritual intent. He backs off not an inch from its normativity nor from its contemporaneity. As he says in Luke chapter 16 verse 17, “But it is easier for heaven and earth to pass away, than for one stroke of a letter in the law to be dropped.” Because greed is idolatry, Jesus calls out the cupidity in the Pharisees’ purported piety: “You are those who justify yourselves in the sight of others; but God knows your hearts; for what is prized by human beings is an abomination in the sight of God” (Luke 16:15). Because faithfulness in marriage is its own picture of Yahweh’s redeeming and wedding his Bride to himself, Jesus dismisses the cavalier and no-fault approach to divorce and remarriage that God’s people have absorbed from their surroundings: “Anyone who divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery, and whoever marries a woman divorced from her husband commits adultery” (Luke 16:18).  

2 Corinthians. The beauty of Paul’s words today is that they shed light on how the rich internal life imagined by the Law (but unable to create it) can take hold in us.  

The gospel as mercy. “…as we received mercy, we do not lose heart…” (2 Corinthians 4:1b). Paul exults in the mercy that had been extended to him. His encounter on the road to Damascus revealed that God was not going to deal with him as his religious pride and sectarian arrogance called for. Rather, God gave him grace to understand the good news that, as he had previously written to these very Corinthians, “Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures….” (1 Corinthians 15:3b–4). 

The gospel as life-giving. On the far side of seeing the gospel as a place to find forgiveness, the gospel gave Paul a vision of “the glory of Christ, who is the image of God” … “the glory of God in the face of Jesus.” That is to say, in the gospel of Christ, Paul was able to reimagine a life fully and truly lived. By the Spirit of God, Christ’s life establishes itself within us, and begins to shine out through us. The light of God’s character — sketched out in the Law in an anticipatory and promissory way — now can shine out into the world, despite, or perhaps precisely because of, cracks in the broken but repaired vessels of clay that we are.  

For Paul, this gift meant a life given no longer, as he says, to preaching himself, “but Christ Jesus as Lord and ourselves as your bond-servants for Jesus’s sake” (2 Corinthians 4:5 NASB). For each of us, there is a moral equivalent: life is no longer about touting ourselves — our own abilities, credentials, and merits — but promoting Christ Jesus as Lord, and offering ourselves as servants for others’ sake.  

Be blessed this day,  

Reggie Kidd+ 

Life on Life Ministry - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Thursday • 6/1/2023 •
Thursday of the Week of Pentecost (Proper 3) 

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 37; Deuteronomy 4:32–40; 2 Corinthians 3:1–18; Luke 16:1–9 

Comments on Luke 16:1–9 from DDD 11/13/2020: https://tinyurl.com/3aky47vn 

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) 

Welcome to Daily Office Devotions, where every Monday through Friday we consider some aspect of that day’s Scripture readings, as given in the Book of Common Prayer. I’m Reggie Kidd, and we are in Proper 3 of Year 1 in the Daily Office Lectionary.  

Among the readings on this Thursday the week of Pentecost it is Paul’s reflections in 2 Corinthians that will receive our attention. An amazing freedom takes hold of our lives when we learn that our prime value comes from the Lord himself, not from external measures such as certificates of authority (degrees, letters, pedigrees). There’s a newfound liberty as we experience the transforming work of the living God coursing through us.  

First, living with and without credentials. “Surely we do not need, as some do, letters of recommendation to you or from you, do we? You yourselves are our letter, written on our hearts, to be known and read by all…” (2 Corinthians 3:1b). It’s hard to believe that after all that Paul and the Corinthians have been through together (read Acts 18 and 1 Corinthians when you get a chance!), some people are asking questions like, “Who stands behind this guy? What credentials does he bring? Why should we give him any more credence than anybody else?” Really? Paul is their father in the faith (1 Corinthians 4:15)! In human terms, he’s the only reason most of them are followers of Christ in the first place.  

And it’s not like Paul couldn’t drop names if he were so inclined. After all, he tells the Galatians that apostolic notables Peter and John, the “pillars” of the Jerusalem church, support him (see Galatians 1–2). Later in this very letter Paul says he’ll compare résumés with anybody! “Indeed you should have been the ones commending me, for I am not at all inferior to these super-apostles, even though I am nothing” (2 Corinthians 12:11). “If anyone else has reason to be confident in the flesh,” he reminds the Philippians, “I have more: circumcised on the eighth day, a member of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless” (Philippians 3:4b–6). And though Paul would never write about such things himself, Luke tells us Paul was educated by Gamaliel in Jerusalem, one of the chief rabbis of his day; he was born a Roman citizen; and, in addition, he was a citizen of his provincial city of Tarsus in Asia Minor (Acts 16:37; 21:39; 22:3,25).  

Image: Saint Paul. Detail of the mosaic in Arian Baptistery. Ravenna, Italy. Ввласенко, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons 

But all of that—all of it—is beside the point for Paul. And it should be for the Corinthians as well. They know firsthand his love for them and the new life in Jesus that has come to them through him. Paul’s appeal is the power of life-on-life ministry. That’s a hard lesson that too many diploma- and credential-obsessed people must learn. That’s good news, conversely, for those of us who feel under-qualified for tasks the Lord calls us to. When he’s supporting us, when he gives us the strength to love, and when he creates results we could never dream of producing ourselves, we can be confident that we are certainly credentialed enough!  

Second, an old covenant and a new covenant. “For if there was glory in the ministry of condemnation, much more does the ministry of justification abound in glory!” (2 Corinthians 3:9). Despite appearances, Paul is not writing off his heritage in today’s reading from 2 Corinthians. Instead, he notes that God’s law-covenant (the Ten Commandments) was transitional, not permanent. That covenant could demand change from us, but it could not transform us. The Ten Commandments prepared us for a covenant in which our hearts themselves would become the repository of the law. They would become places where we would want, and be able, to love God—and our neighbor well. They would become places where righteousness would take hold of us and reshape us after the image of God’s Son. Where righteousness would become ours, first by the Father’s initial declaration of our justification, then by the Spirit’s gradual transformation of us in sanctification, and ultimately by our definitive glorification when Jesus returns to raise us from the dead.  

Third, the Spirit gives liberty. “Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom” (2 Corinthians 3:17). Learning a piece on the piano is an awkward and lengthy process for me. I pore over the notes on the page, find a good recording so I can hear what it is supposed to sound like, and then laboriously acquaint my fingers with where they are supposed to go to make the notes happen. Over and over, I mechanically make my fingers do what the notes say to do, and I try to feel what the recordings make me feel when I listen to them. For the longest time, my playing feels stiff, stilted, frustrating, confining — not musical at all. At some point, though, it’s as though the music descends, takes over, and flows through me. That’s when there’s liberty, when the music descends and begins to flow.  

It is not unlike what Paul is talking about. Underneath all our striving and effort to get life right, we must learn to rely on the visitation of the Spirit of Christ, transforming our offering into heaven’s music. We are called to put ourselves where Christ shows up: where we inhabit his Word as best we can, lift our hearts and voices in song and prayer, reach out our hands to receive the Bread and the Wine, and yield to his promptings for actions of love and mercy and justice. And somehow the life-giving Spirit comes, Christ indwells us more deeply, and his life flows out from lives that have become just that much more transformed into his own likeness.  

Be blessed this day,  

Reggie Kidd+ 

Manual of Leadership - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Wednesday • 5/31/2023 •
Wednesday of the Week of Pentecost (Proper 3) 

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 38; Deuteronomy 4:25–31; 2 Corinthians 1:23–2:17; Luke 15:1–2,11–32 

Comments on Luke 15:1–2,11–32 from DDD 11/12/2020: https://tinyurl.com/ua8jw847 

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) 

Welcome to Daily Office Devotions, where every Monday through Friday we ask how God might direct our lives from that day’s Scripture readings, as given in the Book of Common Prayer. I’m Reggie Kidd, and I’m grateful to be with you Today is Wednesday of the Week of Pentecost, and our readings come from Proper 3 in the Daily Office Lectionary.  

Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians demands a slow read, but it pays extraordinary dividends with close attention. Here in this letter is the closest thing the Bible ever gives us to a manual of leadership. Three features of today’s passage in 2 Corinthians are worth lingering over.  

First, biblical leadership is exercised from alongside, not from above. Paul says that he writes to the Corinthians not as a domineering overlord, but as a companion (ouk … kurieuein, … alla sunergoi esmen—2 Corinthians 1:24). We all know what it feels like to have someone stand over us with scowling face, wagging a finger at us. That’s not Paul. That’s not Paul because that’s not Jesus, and Paul is all about Jesus. Like his Master, Paul served alongside his congregants. He did not impose authority upon them in “lordly” fashion (thus the “kurieu-“ in “domineering”). He was “with” them—thus, the Latin com- in “companion,” and the Greek sun- in sunergoi.  

I hope we’ve known spiritual leaders who know how to stand next to us and lead the way by pointing out a path that we can travel together. That’s what Paul is doing in this letter about leadership.  

Image: The Apostle Paul, Rembrandt , Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons  

Second, biblical leadership is exercised through tears. It’s likely that the disciplinary situation in Corinth that had led Paul to write an earlier tearful letter had to do with the man who was in an inappropriate relationship with his stepmother in 1 Corinthians 5: “It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and of a kind that is not found even among pagans; for a man is living with his father’s wife” (1 Corinthians 5:1). Not only had many Christians in Corinth thought that this practice was perfectly consistent with their faith, they even thought their perspective was enlightened, liberated, and progressive: “And you are proud! (1 Corinthians 5:2, NET).”  

From a biblical point of view, and in classical Christian ethical thinking, our sex lives are not our own private exclusive domain. Our sex lives are, in the first place, God’s; in intimacy as in anything else we either honor him or dishonor him. Second, our sex lives are either community-building or community-destroying. Fidelity and good boundaries create harmony and trust, while infidelity and boundary-violation bring disharmony and mistrust. Finally, our sex lives are a potential source of intimate joy and mutual pleasure where intimacy, joy, and mutuality are unclouded by guilt or by  a transgressive spirit.   

At the same time, these matters are deeply personal, and seem like they should be private. It can feel inappropriately meddlesome to have someone presume to call your sexual practices into question. As spiritual father of the church of Corinth, Paul must have had a lot of credibility. But still, the Corinthians needed to see (even through the indirect medium of a letter) the tears that accompanied his words of correction. They needed to know it cost Paul not to be with them as he gave them space to sort out truth from error. They needed to know that he was willing to be painfully distant for the sake, eventually, of long-term joy and fellowship. For his intervention not to be maladroit meddlesomeness, they needed his tears.  

Third, biblical leadership is exercised from behind Christ’s chariot of triumph. And so, Paul wants the Corinthians to know that he speaks only as one who has died in Christ. He speaks only as a willing captive in Christ’s triumphal procession. He speaks only as one who, like the defeated enemy of a mighty general or emperor, is humiliated and mocked and scorned on the way to death in the coliseum. He only speaks “from behind the chariot.” Paul trusts his readers to recognize the fragrance of life in the death he had died in yielding to Christ’s imperium. It was only this way that they could smell the sweetness of their own death to ego, to a sense of superiority, to pride in personal independence.  

May we respond joyfully to the claims of the Christ who came to be with us, who woos us with his own tears, and who won his own triumph by yielding first to the ignominy of the Cross.  

Be blessed this day,  

Reggie Kidd+