There’s a God With a Plan - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Thursday • 6/29/2023

Welcome to Daily Office Devotions. I’m Reggie Kidd. Thanks for joining me. 

We’re taking a detour from the Daily Office readings this week and next. Instead, we’re 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 (sometimes lightly edited) from articles I wrote for Worship Leader Magazine a few years ago.  

They come from a season in my life when I was on a journey from more generic free-form worship to worship shaped by the classic liturgy. I hope these observations help you in your own quest to love God and your neighbor.  

“Redemption Songs: Plainsong Style”
 

As the credits roll in the movie I Am Legend, Bob Marley sings:  

Won’t you help to sing  
These songs of freedom? 
‘Cause all I ever have:  
Redemption songs, 
Redemption songs, 
Redemption songs.  

An artful choice. Marley’s reggae music provides the movie’s central character, Robert Neville (played by Will Smith) a slender line of hope. He’s reluctant to believe that in his post-apocalyptic world there’s a God with a plan, reluctant to believe even that any other non-zombie humans exist. Marley’s voice from a healthier world helps him fend off despair. 

Many of us know what it is to feel cut off — to have no sense that there’s a master plan. The driver from hell nearly runs you off the road. Cash flow is negative. A relationship unravels. Evil reigns in the world, good is thwarted at every turn. And you go: “Am I left alone?”

Image: "I Am Legend" by Buou is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 

Will Smith had Bob Marley’s reggae. I have the book of Psalms — and I have them in the ancient church’s plainsong.  

The Psalms invite me to tell God’s people’s story as my own: Give thanks to the Lord …; make known his deeds among the peoples (Ps 105:1). Warnings made to others become warnings I send to my own unbelieving heart: … they did not wait for his counsel (Ps 106:13). Betrayals of David, then of my Redeemer, and now, to my astonishment, of me — I find I share — I mean really share — by virtue of taking David’s and Jesus’ words as my very own: Even my best friend, whom I trusted, … has turned against me (Ps 41:9). Promises made to others, I take for myself — Taste and see that the Lord is good (Ps 34:8) — as though they were intended for me in the first place. Wisdom aimed at people three millennia ago I sing as though I had thought it up myself: … my feet had nearly slipped … because I envied the proud (Ps 73:2a,3a).  

The power lies not just in the Psalms’ words, though. It lies also in their music. “He who reads the Torah without chant, of him can it be said as it is written, ‘the laws that I gave you were not good,’” says the Mishnah’s Rabbi Johanan. How much more true of the psalms. Ancient Israel chanted the psalms. The ancient church chanted them as well. “A soul rightly ordered by chanting the sacred words forgets its own afflictions and contemplates with joy the things of Christ alone,” maintained Athanasius of Alexandria in the 4th century. 

Fact is, when truth becomes song, you know it at a deeper level.  

I have began chanting psalms in my daily devotions. I’m do so using the eight ancient plainsong chant tones that have their origins in the Gregorian musical revolution of the middle of the 1st millennium, as recovered and restored in the late 19th century. James Litton has adapted them for church and individual singing in his handsome volume, The Plainsong Psalter (Church Publishing Inc., 1988; ISBN: 978-0809691627 — hardback, quarto-sized, $40).  

A couple of friends on the other side of the country have bonded with me in an arrangement of spirit. We’re simply following the course laid out in the Daily Office in the Book of Common Prayer (which serves as the text base for The Plainsong Psalter). It takes seven weeks to chant through the psalms, a pace of about three psalms per day. It’s a tempo that works for me. 

The great thing about chant is that you don’t have to force the text into an artificial meter. Chanting allows the text to take its own meter and rhythm. In a given line, singers stay on a chanting tone all the way up to the last note (or two or three) of a phrase.  

The plainsong music is lovely. Tone 1 is the basis for the tune most of us know as “When I Survey the Wondrous Cross.” And if you’ve admired Allegri’s Miserere, you’ll recognize Tone 2 to be the cantor’s melody.   

In the early hours of the morning I enjoy the fellowship across 1500 years or so with folks who have shared these psalms in similar fashion. I love the bold aspiration of the original Gregorians: to create a music that all believers could sing and that was trying to be indigenously Christian, but that was in positive dialogue with the best music theory of its day. 

In this world that is beyond crazy I enjoy having my “soul rightly ordered” as I sing redemption songs, plainsong-style. 

Be blessed this day,  

Reggie Kidd+ 

The Clown Was Me - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Wednesday • 6/28/2023 

Welcome to Daily Office Devotions. I’m Reggie Kidd. Thanks for joining me. 

We’re taking a detour from the Daily Office readings this week and next. Instead, we’re 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 (sometimes lightly edited) from articles I wrote for Worship Leader Magazine a few years ago.  

They come from a season in my life when I was on a journey from more generic free-form worship to worship shaped by the classic liturgy. I hope these observations help you in your own quest to love God and your neighbor.  

“The ‘Clown’ Was Me” 

Just as I was ordering my Big Mac, a woman came into McDonald’s yanking on the arm of a young child. Ugliness leaped from this slovenly woman. Dragging on a cigarette butt, she yelled at her kid: “Shut up and tell me what you want to eat, or I’m going to kick you from here to Kingdom come!”  

But then I noticed this distinctive shape to her face ... 

Suddenly, I realized this face was identical to that of one of the prostitutes French artist Georges Rouault had once painted. This woman could have served as his model.  

Though he lived from 1871 to 1958, Rouault’s most notable working years spanned WWI and WWII. Many artists of his day heard in the turmoil of their times the death-knell of Christendom and of the Christian faith. For Rouault, though, the times were proof of our need for Christ.  

His art became the means of bringing together God’s story and our pain.  

As a teen, Rouault had apprenticed as a stained glass artisan. He learned to tell a story through simplicity of line and color. In his early adult years he studied the realistic technique of Rembrandt, in quest of that master’s psychological depth. Rouault’s early work, not surprisingly, reveals an artist who has not yet found his voice.  

Then, around 1903 when Rouault was in his early 30’s, he had a happenstance encounter with an off-duty clown. Everything changed. It is the moment, as he puts it, “that marked the beginnings of poetry in my life.”  

Rouault comes upon this old clown “mending his glittering and colorful costume.” He sees the jarring contrast of “brilliant, scintillating things, made to amuse us,” on the one hand, and the infinite sadness in the man’s unguarded face, on the other.  

I clearly saw that the “Clown” was me, it was us. ... This rich and spangled costume is given to us by life, we are all clowns more or less, we all wear a “spangled costume,” but if we are caught unawares, as I surprised the old clown, oh! Then who would dare to say that he is not moved to the bottom of his being by immeasurable pity. 

Rouault begins to paint pictures that tell us the truth about ourselves: sorrowful clowns (“Who does not paint himself a face?”), imperious kings (“We think we are kings...”), self-absorbed bourgeoisie (“The well-bred lady thinks she has a reserved seat in heaven.”)  

He drops his realistic technique for the look of the stained glass of his youth: thick, simple lines. Vivid colors. Simple but penetrating truths about ourselves.  

Stained glass is above all the church’s art. Here’s where Rouault’s art becomes poetry. He uses his stained glass effect because, in pity, he would point us to Jesus, to him who had become “like us in all things, save sin” so he could redeem and heal us. In Rouault’s hands, one portrait of Christ looks as ugly as the sinners with whom he identifies, while another portrait is iconically transcendent, a promise of peace and resurrection.   

Standing at that McDonalds counter, I realized that despite all that made us different, this woman and I were the same. Same ugliness. Same dignity and beauty for which we were created, but from which we have fallen so hopelessly and seemingly irrevocably.  

Then came the epiphany, unbidden. In a flash, I recalled Rouault’s famous Head of Christ. I think it was the shape of the jaw. In my imagination, the woman’s face morphed, first, to that of Rouault’s sad, angry prostitute, then second, to his sadder, compassionate Christ.  

Art of any sort — from painting to music to worship design — has this extraordinary power: it can bring a whispered promise or a shouted call from another realm. The incarnation itself brings, after all, God’s permanent residence in our reality.   

Rouault’s portrait of the prostitute said: “Doesn’t she look a lot like you and me?” His portrait of Christ said: “Didn’t he come for the likes of her and you and me?”  

I should have talked to this “Fallen Eve” (a term Rouault sometimes used). But the words wouldn’t come. All I knew to do in that moment was pray: “Lord, have mercy. On her. On me. On this sad world you love. In your own time and in your own way, show yourself to this dear child of yours, and save her. And Lord, forgive my blindness to what, or rather Who, makes us one.” I pray for her still.  

Be blessed this day,  

Reggie Kidd+ 

Worship Renewal - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Tuesday • 6/27/2023 

Welcome to Daily Office Devotions. I’m Reggie Kidd. Thanks for joining me. 

We’re taking a detour from the Daily Office readings this week and next. Instead, we’re 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 (sometimes lightly edited) from articles I wrote for Worship Leader Magazine a few years ago.  

They come from a season in my life when I was on a journey from more generic free-form worship to worship shaped by the classic liturgy. I hope these observations help you in your own quest to love God and your neighbor.  

“Bigger Voices” 

My father was a victim of Alzheimer’s disease. It was hard to watch this once vibrantly inquisitive retired college professor lose his ability to remember. Along with his ability to remember, he lost his capacity for learning as well. For a brief stint, my dad stayed in a facility for the “pleasantly confused.” As we were moving him in to is new home in the memory care unit, I noticed flaps over the elevator controls. 

“Why the flaps?” I asked a nurse. 

“It’s how we keep residents from leaving their floor and wandering off.” 

“I don’t get it. How does that work?” 

“A person like your father doesn’t just have memory issues. Although he can’t remember old things, he can’t learn new things either. So no matter how many times he might see someone lift the flap and press the button underneath, he can’t learn it for himself.” 

In that moment, I realized the phrase “pleasantly confused” was a nice way of describing something quite sad: being trapped in the present. 

Image: "330_capo" by Lamerie is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0  

We are in the midst of one of the realignments — writer Phyllis Tickle calls them “rummage sales” — the faith goes through every 500 years or so. Around A.D. 500 there was a Great Consolidation, around A.D. 1000 a Great Schism, around A.D. 1500 a Great Reformation. Now we are experiencing, she maintains, a Great Emergence. 

Just what it is that will emerge is unclear. Everything seems to be up for grabs — how to worship, whom to worship, why worship in the first place. One thing that is clear, at least to me, is this: privileged — or consigned — to live in such a time, we need wisdom greater than our own. When David Crowder sings, “I need a voice bigger than mine,” I feel him. Our capacity to contribute to the future hinges on our access to “bigger voices” that free us from entrapment in the present. 

When I first started designing worship services, my main goal was to pick songs that complemented the sermon and that did not require changing the capo setting on my guitar. I was using a screw-on capo that took about a minute to adjust. So the ideal set of worship music consisted of songs that could be played, say, at “capo 3” (like Eb, Bb, or F) or in “open capo” (like C, G, or D). It was pretty confining. 

Eventually, not only did I figure out other capos existed, more importantly I started teaching worship in a school that valued the theology of the Great Reformation. From those “bigger voices” of a half millennium ago, I learned the value of creeds and confessions in worship. 

Recent years have taken me further back, to those “bigger voices” that gave us the Great Consolidation in the middle of the first millennium. 

The 4th century theologian Athanasius of Alexandria argued that worship itself hangs on celebrating the Word’s taking on flesh to redeem all creation. If Christ is God, all is won. If not, nothing is. 

The anonymous 2nd century singers of the so-called Odes of Solomon modeled worship as a participation in Jesus’s own song: “lifting his voice to the Most High and offering to him those who have become sons through him.” 

In the late 6th century, Gregory the Great, bishop of Rome, launched a quest for a common pattern of chant for the Western church. From 1,500 years away, he gently rebukes our capitulation to niche marketing and musical apartheid. 

From Jerusalem to Syria to Rome, churches’ reflection on Scripture led to a common pattern of gathering in praise, attending to the Word, communing at the Table, and joyfully charging back out into the world to minister Christ there. 

Here’s the great thing about rummage sales. They give you a chance to unload some things that haven’t done you much good in a long time. They also give you a chance to rediscover things you’d forgotten you even had, but now can’t believe you’ve been able to live without. There is much the ancient church has to teach us about God, and about the how and why of worship. 

My father’s disease left him living only in the present. He had no access to the past, nor to the future. Perhaps it’s our very access to worship’s past that holds the greatest promise for worship’s renewal in the future. 

Be blessed this day,  

Reggie Kidd+ 

Entrapment in the Present 

“Ancient Future” Resources for Worship Renewal 

Robert Webber, Ancient Future Worship (Baker Books, 2008) 

Athanasius of Alexandria, On the Incarnation (St. Vladimirs Seminary Press, 1993), with an introduction by C. S. Lewis. Text, minus Lewis introduction at http://ccel.org. 

The Odes of Solomon Project, 2CD set (http://www.theodesproject.com/index.cfm). 

Hippolytus, On the Apostolic Tradition (SVS Press, 2001) 

St. Cyril of Jerusalem, On the Sacraments (SVS Press, 1995, 2017) 

Virtual Church - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Monday • 6/26/2023 

Welcome to Daily Office Devotions. I’m Reggie Kidd. Thanks for joining me. 

We’re taking a detour from the Daily Office readings this week and next. 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 (sometimes lightly edited) from articles I wrote for Worship Leader magazine a few years ago.  

They come from a season in my life when I was on a journey from more generic free-form worship to worship shaped by the classic liturgy. I hope these observations help you in your own quest to love God and your neighbor.  

“Virtual Church — Really?” 

“Maybe we should offer church online.” 

“Really? You mean ‘virtual’ church? ‘Almost’ church?” 

Image: Cathedral Church of St. Luke, Orlando, Florida, online service image 

Several years ago, when my church began to think about offering a real-time and interactive, online way of attending its services, I had doubts. How, I wondered, could worship be authentic if we’re not all actually in the same room? Would “online church” be “narcissistic,” where people hide their actual selves behind a self-inflated electronic persona? Would “online church” be “excarnate,” where we lose person-to-person relationships and diminish the “embodiedness” of Jesus’s existence? 

To the contrary, in some respects my experience of online church can leave me feeling more “connected” than sometimes when I’m in the same room with a lot of people I don’t know. 

From Central FL, I exchange the Peace of Christ with former students in Argentina and Sweden. I meet a Ukrainian national our church has supported for years — and we talk about my maybe coming to Ukraine some time. Sue in western PA is surprised to find her parents in eastern PA worshiping online at the same time. Brad in MO has logged on for the first time, and is blown away when the worship leader welcomes him by name from the platform. Naomi in AL has a question, and Terri in LA responds before the “online minister” can chime in. Bob in NYC is crushingly lonely, and he tells everybody how important being “with them” this morning is to him – he’s blitzed with encouraging remarks and promises of prayer.  

At a given service, we might have 2,000 in the building and 600 online. A few “onliners” worship anonymously, but most give their names and locations, and provide a picture. While the service is being webcast in real time, you can “chat” with anybody who’s logged in, as well as post comments to the whole group. An “online minister” presides, part greeter, part confidant, part prayer request gatherer, part answer-man, part “hall monitor.” And the interaction is non-stop.  

Week after week, people login from home, from an out-of-town Starbucks, from the mission field, or from an overseas military base. Cheerily, they put up with dropped connections or the occasional “off task” remark or rant by a fellow online worshiper. Some folks sing along. Some don’t. Most simply take in the service, but many “chatter” throughout: “Amen-ing” the songs or the message, asking for prayer, offering prayer and encouragement, posing and answering questions, suggesting improvements to the interface.   

Almost as if in answer to my fears about the loss of personal relationships, a committed team of “online ministers” has emerged — of whom I, to my surprise, have recently become a part. We recognize it wasn’t enough for Paul to write to the Romans; he was going to do everything he could to come to them (Rom 1:10-13). So, two of my ministry partners drove hundreds of miles just to be with a fellow who came to faith in Christ through the online ministry. This team works hard to provide a personal touch. They stay in touch by email and phone, following up questions and prayer requests, encouraging clusters among fellow “onliners” who live near each other.  

Almost as if in answer to my concern about people hiding their genuine selves behind “virtual selves,” one of our church members undertook a 10,000 mile odyssey in her van to visit “onliner” individuals, families, and clusters around the country. The images and stories she brought back were of vibrant faithfulness and obedience — of the desire to be anything but merely a virtual self. She met folks grateful to be included as “living stones” in a great house God is building by the Spirit (1 Pet 2:4-5).  

They are a part of the Story of Jesus. He came in bodily form, died and rose that we might one day have perfected bodies. He promised to return bodily, and in the meantime called us to be communities that continue his incarnate life in the world. So, while Jesus no longer, for now, occupies a single physical space on earth, we gather to celebrate a Presence that’s not confined to our gathering.  

Bob Webber used to say that while modern technology created the broadcasting church, postmodern technology was going to lead to an interactive church. Maybe he was right. If there weren’t a massive hunger for connectedness in our world, there would be no Facebook, no Twitter. If there weren’t an urgent quest for immediate, at-your-fingertips information, there would be no Wikipedia community. Wherever believers are, we find the same longings. Because it offers flexibility of expression and immediacy of fellowship (where it’s not weird if you ask people for prayer the moment you show up), perhaps “virtual” church will help “normal” church become more “real” church.  

Be blessed this day, 

Reggie Kidd+ 

Darkness and Aloneness - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Friday • 6/23/2023 
Friday of the Third Week After Pentecost (Proper 6) 

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 88; 1 Samuel 3:1–21; Acts 2:37–47; Luke 21:5–19 

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) 

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 3rd Week After Pentecost. We are in Proper 6 of Year 1 of the Daily Office Lectionary.  

To me, Psalm 88 is the “Hello darkness, my old friend, I’ve come to talk with you again” psalm. Every time I read it, I come under the spell of Simon and Garfunkel’s ode to loneliness and existential worry, “I am a rock, I am an island.” I am grateful that, in Psalm 88, our Bible includes a similarly raw statement of angst.  

The psalmist teeters on the brink of unwelcomed death: “[M]y life is at the brink of the grave. I am counted among those who go down to the Pit” (Psalm 88:3b,4a). He feels abandoned by God, and fears eternal separation: “Lost among the dead … Your anger weighs upon me heavily … Will your loving-kindness be declared in the grave?” (Psalm 88:5a,8a,12a). The psalmist is utterly alone in his misery: “You have put my friends far from me; you have made me to be abhorred by them … My friend and my neighbor you have put away from me, and darkness is my only companion” (Psalm 88:9ab,19).  

Image: "Wretched" by pcgn7 is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0 

What redeems the grit and honesty of this psalm is the fact that it is, after all, a prayer. It isn’t hurled into sheer and empty darkness. The psalmist opens: “O Yahweh, my God, my Savior, by day and night I cry to you. Let my prayer enter into your presence; incline your ear to my lamentation” (Psalm 88:1). The psalmist addresses God by his personal name, Yahweh, the name he gave when he came to redeem (see Exodus 3–4). It’s “my God” and “my Savior.” And the addressee is not “darkness, my old friend.” It’s a living presence whom the psalmist seeks: “Let my prayer enter into your presence; incline your ear….” There’s a stubbornness about biblical faith—it cries out to the light in the deepest of darkness.  

Still, if you and I don’t sense the darkness and the aloneness of Psalm 88, either we haven’t lived long enough or we’re not paying close enough attention. Nor are we able to appreciate the wonder that fills people who dare to believe in the Bible’s promise of rescue and redemption.  

Today’s other passages affirm both the raw honesty and the vibrant hope.  

1 Samuel: good news and bad news. In a day in which word from Yahweh was rare and visions were not widespread, Eli learns that change is in the offing. Eli recognizes that the voice awakening his ward Samuel from his slumbers is Yahweh’s. Israel’s God is on the move again, advancing his program of redemption and restoration. That good news comes with a downside. The consequences of Eli’s negligence and lack of spiritual leadership over his sons are painful. Nonetheless, his trust in Yahweh gives him acceptance: “He is Yahweh; let him do what he thinks good” (1 Samuel 3:18 JB).   

In Luke, Jesus prepares his disciples for cataclysmic change ahead. The stone and mortar temple that had (in one form or another) been at the center of God’s relationship with his people for 1,000 years had reached the end of its “shelf life.” Christ’s sacrifice will have proven to be the final goal of that building’s existence. In advance of a day in which God’s house would be composed of “living stones” (1 Peter 2:5), Jesus says of the recently and exquisitely refurbished Second Temple, “[N]ot one stone will be left upon another; all will be thrown down” (Luke 21:6).  

In Acts, Peter begins to reap the benefits of that cataclysmic change. Tongues of fire have descended from heaven, dissolving barriers to communication. God begins to build his new house with converts from all around the Mediterranean Basin whom providence had brought to Jerusalem for the Jewish “Pentecost,” a celebration of the first fruits and of the giving of the Law.  

Little did they know the new power the term Pentecost would hereafter take on. They themselves become the first fruits of a new humanity, “ground zero” for the Holy Spirit’s new regime of life. Hearts change, as do ways of living. New believers share meals as well as possessions. They absorb the apostles’ teaching about how God has fulfilled ancient promises through Jesus his Son. They marvel at God’s marvelous works, and in prayer and praise, they experience worship in a new way. In their growing numbers and in their “favor with all the people,” they taste the blessing that God’s in-breaking means for the whole world.  

When the night is dark, when the ceiling seems impenetrable, and when nobody seems to listen or to care, may you and I nonetheless penetrate the dark with our cry, “O Yawheh, my God, my Savior.” As we immerse ourselves in God’s story of redemption and find our place at the table of fellowship in his Son, may we find the Spirit bringing comfort and courage to our hearts.  

Be blessed this day,  

Reggie Kidd+ 

Lord of Heaven and Earth - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Thursday • 6/22/2023 
Thursday of the Third Week After Pentecost (Proper 6) 

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 34; 1 Samuel 2:27–36; Acts 2:22–36; Luke 20:41–21:4 

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 3rd Week After Pentecost, and our readings come from Proper 6 of Year 1 in the Daily Office Lectionary.  

Anyone who has had a taste of power, prestige, and wealth knows the dangers these things can present. The feeling can be one of entitlement. The powerful may feel that the weak are weak because they deserve to be weak. Important people may feel their own importance is self-evident, as is the unimportance of the unimportant. The “haves” may feel that they have, because they ought to have and, and likewise, that the “have nots” have not, because they ought not to have. It’s a seductive logic.  

Pride and pretense in 1 Samuel. It’s a logic to which Eli and his sons have succumbed. In the auspicious line of the original Hebrew priest Aaron, they are principal overseers of worship at Shiloh, the center of the Israelites’ religious life at the end of the period of the Judges. The arrogant sons, Hophni and Phinehas, overreach their legitimate prerogative of receiving support from the people’s offerings. So they put on a good show. They vest in sacred garments, ascend the altar, and offer incense (2 Samuel 2:28). Their glory entitles them, they feel, to demand more than their due. They blatantly transgress sexual boundaries, because, well, because they can. Eli, the father, fails to rein his sons in because he, too, profits from their profligacy: “[You] honor your sons more than me by fattening yourselves on the choicest parts of every offering of my people Israel” (2 Samuel 2:29).  

Image: Stained glass, Cathedral Church of St. Luke, Orlando, Florida. 

Pride and pretense in Luke. A thousand years later in the time of Christ’s earthly ministry, nothing has changed. The Sadducean aristocracy oversees a spectacular theatre of worship in Herod’s shrine to his own ego. Denying the idea of resurrection, they accommodate the faith to their earthly satisfactions. Scribes parade their piety: “walk[ing] around in long robes, and lov[ing] to be greeted with respect in the marketplace, and to have the best seats in the synagogues and places of honor at banquets. They devour widows’ houses and for the sake of appearance say long prayers” (Luke 20:46–47). Meanwhile, rich people make a show of the generosity with which they underwrite all the pageantry.   

God upsets the apple cart. But it’s all an illusion, insists the Bible—as proof of which God inserts himself to upset the apple cart. What Eli and sons cannot snuff out is the reality of the God of the temple, who in his own time and his own way will reclaim his sacred space. Eli’s line will end (see 1 Samuel 4:11,18; 22:18–19), except for one descendant who will carry the sad tale of his family’s religious treachery (see the account of Abiathar in 1 Kings 1–2). What the Sadducees cannot eliminate from Scripture in their desire to flatten it to an exclusively this-worldly faith is the mystery of God’s Messiah (and David’s son) having an eternal and divine existence. How indeed, Jesus asks, can David’s son be David’s Lord, as Psalm 110 says he is—unless, David’s son be more than man, but God?! And unless Scripture’s promises be about more than life and prosperity and success in this life?  

The “little people” who see things aright in Acts and Luke. And so, the “little people” have their say: in Acts, the uneducated Galilean fisherman Peter astounds the Jerusalem residents and pilgrims. God has established Jesus as the Lord and Messiah David had prophesied. Peter explains that the rejection of Jesus was, ironically, part of the proof that Jesus was predestined to suffer, and then rise to take his rightful place as Lord of heaven and earth. And Luke’s poor widow models the kind of generosity that matters to God: a generosity of open heart and open hand: “…she out of her poverty has put in all she had to live on” (Luke 21:4).  

Today’s readings stand as a bold affirmation of David’s prayer in today’s Psalm: 

The eyes of the Lord are upon the righteous, * 
    and his ears are open to their cry. 
The face of the Lord is against those who do evil, * 
    to root out the remembrance of them from the earth. 
The righteous cry, and the Lord hears them * 
    and delivers them from all their troubles. 
The Lord is near to the brokenhearted * 
    and will save those whose spirits are crushed. … 
The Lord ransoms the life of his servants, * 
    and none will be punished who trust in him (Psalm 34:15–18,22 BCP). 

Living beyond the illusion of power, prestige, and wealth, and living in the reality of God’s vindication, protection, and provision in Christ, may you be blessed this day. 

Reggie Kidd+ 

The Spirit Unites Us - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Wednesday • 6/21/2023 
Wednesday of the Third Week After Pentecost (Proper 6) 

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 119:97–120; 1 Samuel 2:12–26; Acts 2:1–21; Luke 20:27–40 

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 3rd Week After Pentecost, and our readings come from Proper 6 in Year 1 of the Daily Office Lectionary.  

1 Samuel: abusers of spiritual power. Eli’s sons are gluttons, lechers, and abusers of power. They demand offerings to which they have no right; they receive sexual favors from women who facilitate temple worship. Their story is ever a strong warning against clergy abuse of power, especially for gluttonous, avaricious, and lecherous ends.  

It’s an absolutely horrifying tableau. The sons had been set apart to handle holy things. Those things—the temple and its precincts and artifacts, not to mention the people who go there to be sanctified, and the fellow servants, especially the women, who support the ministry of consecrating all of life to the Lord—it’s all, in fact, objectively holy. There is a weightiness and purity to God’s own being that is constantly pressing down upon it all, ready to break in, or alternatively, that is constantly within it, ready to break out.  

Image: Pentecostal Icon. Unknown author, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons. 

Luke: dullards of spiritual reality. In corollary fashion, and for whatever reason, members of the Sadducee party of Jesus’s day have insulated themselves from the wonder of the living God. Whether it’s the luxury they enjoy by virtue of an aristocratic pedigree, or the impressiveness of the trappings of temple finery they oversee, they have relegated faith to a “this-worldly” dimension. They read Scripture as though it is aimed simply at giving meaning to this life.  

Jesus rebukes them for not having the spiritual sensors that should have indicated that a God who is called “the God of (the long departed) Abraham and Isaac and Jacob” is necessarily a God of the living, and therefore, necessarily (given the Bible’s high view of creation), a God who will raise the dead.  

Acts: recipients of God’s presence. The glory of Pentecost is the breaking in, or breaking out, of God’s holy presence in blessing. That numinous presence had been manifested from time to time in Israel’s history: at the burning bush, on Mt. Sinai, during the desert journey, in David’s singing, at the temple dedication. Now, in the Book of Acts, the Spirit of holiness breaks in, or breaks out, at the beginning of a permanent taking-up-of-residence in a people made holy by the once-for-all, sanctifying work of God’s Son on the Cross.  

In the past, the Spirit would come temporarily upon notables like a Moses or a David—or even a Saul. Now there’s a democratization of the Spirit, for the Spirit of God comes to old and young, men and women, servant and free. The spectacular ability suddenly to communicate in “every native language” (Greek, dialektos) seems to be not a permanent and abiding work of the Spirit. For the nearly 2,100 years that have passed since Pentecost, missionaries have had to go to language school to learn to minister in languages not their own. But this extraordinary display in Jerusalem (and to be repeated in Samaria, at Cornelius’s house, and in Ephesus—see Acts 8,10–11,19) depicts and symbolizes the power of the Spirit to unite people of all languages around the singular name of the Lord Jesus and his Father.   

Gracious God and Father, deliver us from pride and presumption when it comes to your holy name.  

Lord Jesus Christ, give us grace to live with a clear-eyed focus on, and an eager anticipation of, the Day of your return and our resurrection. 

Spirit of Holiness, dwell in us more deeply that we may speak to whomever you send us lovingly, truthfully, and compellingly of the grace of the Lord Jesus.  

Be blessed this day, 

Reggie Kidd+ 

The Great Story of God’s Restoring - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Tuesday • 6/20/2023 
Tuesday of the Third Week After Pentecost (Proper 6) 

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 78; 1 Samuel 1:21–2:11; Acts 1:15–26; Luke 20:19–26 

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 3rd Week After Pentecost, and our readings come from Proper 6 of Year 1 in the Daily Office Lectionary.  

The Bible’s basic premise is that from Genesis 3 on, everything is upside down…and that God is in the business of putting things right side up again.  

We’ve recently read Deuteronomy’s warning about making idols out of human figures: “…take care and watch yourselves closely, so that you do not act corruptly by making an idol for yourselves, in the form of any figure—the likeness of male or female” (Deuteronomy 4:15b–16). The reason for this particular proscription is that we humans ourselves bear God’s image. We are not made to worship ourselves, but instead to worship the Lord. We do so in no small part by offering ourselves as emissaries of his presence and rule. It is a high dignity. And the whole thing gets subverted when we reverse things.  

Luke. One of the ways the Roman Caesars projected their own presence and rule over their empire was through coinage that bore their image and name. Jesus’s enemies try to get him to declare himself to be either a collaborationist or an insurrectionist: support the despised Roman overlords by affirming Roman taxation and lose the support of the people, or throw in his lot with the revolutionaries and get himself arrested. It seems like a clever ruse.  

Image: "العملة المذكورة بالانجيل من زمن سيدنا المسيح ع The Biblical Tribute Penny: Tiberius AR Denarius 16-34 AD; Obverse" by Icarus Kuwait is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 

Let Caesar have his coins, Jesus asserts, and by implication, his pretense of presence and his time-limited rule. But the tagline is even more significant: “…and to God the things that are God’s” (Luke 20:25). Each one of us bears the image of the ruler of the universe. Each one of us has God’s name inscribed into the fabric of our being. The fealty, tribute, service, obeisance, honor, worship, and praise we owe to him is far more significant than whatever demands an earthly ruler may impose upon us. God’s presence is ubiquitous, and his rule inescapable.  

Because humans have made idols out of lesser things, including “the likeness of male or female,” the universe has been knocked off its axis. No sooner, though, did Adam and Eve start us on this sad path than God began the slow, but inexorable, process of putting things back into kilter.  

1 Samuel. Biblical saints have recognized God’s commitment to fix things from the very beginning—they recognized it, especially, in the calling of Israel to be a people of God’s possession and a blessing to the nations. Hannah, the grateful mother of Samuel, realizes that the birth of her son, Israel’s future kingmaker, represents a turning point in the great drama of redemption. For that reason, she lauds the God who lifts up the lowly and turns the table on the tyrants. Her song serves as the template for Mary, mother of Jesus.  

Hannah’s “My heart exults in the Lord” is a perfect set up to Mary’s “My soul magnifies the Lord” (compare Luke 1:46 with 1 Samuel 2:1). Mary’s “he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts. He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty” (Luke 1:51–53) crisply summarizes themes announced by Hannah. The arrogant will not carry the day. The feeble will defeat the mighty. The rich and the poor, and the fruitful and the barren, will exchange roles. All this the Lord will do, says Hannah, when he gives “strength to his king, and exalt[s] the power of his anointed” (1 Samuel 2:10). This very thing the Lord has now begun through his son, Jesus the Messiah-King.  

Acts. It is thrilling to see Peter and the band of 120 or so followers of Jesus (and witnesses to his resurrection) faithfully doing as they had been told: waiting in Jerusalem for power from on high. Even as they wait, they are conscious that they participate in the great story of God’s restoring, through a renewed Israel, all that had been lost in the Garden. To that end they ask God to bring the number of the inner circle of disciples back up to twelve.  

They faithfully wait—which is what we find ourselves doing a lot. But we do so, faithfully and prayerfully, for we know that the idols will fall, the Caesars will ultimately yield the field, the barren will bring forth children, and the weak will be made strong.  

Be blessed this day,  

Reggie Kidd+ 

Prayers Play Their Part - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Monday • 6/19/2023 
Monday of the Third Week After Pentecost (Proper 6)  

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 80; 1 Samuel 1:1–20; Acts 1:1–14; Luke 20:9–19 

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 3rd Week After Pentecost, and our readings come from Proper 6 of Year 1 in the Daily Office Lectionary.  

“After Pentecost,” and the history of the kingship. During the rest of this “After Pentecost” season (that is, through November), our Old Testament readings survey the history of the kingship in Israel. The prophet Samuel reluctantly crowns Saul as Israel’s first king. Saul proves to be a dismal failure. He has no heart for God. Following Saul, valiant and humble David and wise Solomon rule over a united kingdom. It is a kingdom that partially—but only partially—models what God’s kingdom-life looks like here on earth. Following Solomon’s death, though, tensions between the southern area of Judah and the northern area of Israel lead to a division into separate kingdoms.  

Abraham’s descendants were called to be a blessing to the nations. Ironically, they go to Assyria and Babylon as exiles and captives. Eventually, they return, although without a king. Under Ezra and Nehemiah, they rebuild their cities and the temple. Finally, in preparation for the season of Advent and the coming of Israel’s and the world’s true King, we will read about the early days of the initial struggle led by the Maccabean family to free Judea from Hellenistic domination and to rededicate the temple to the Lord.  

Image: Hannah at prayer. Wilhelm Wachtel , Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons. 

In a way that is so very fitting to the Bible’s way of seeing things, we open this chapter of Israel’s history with 1 Samuel 1’s vignette of a woman tearfully praying for the birth of a child. Without ever casting any doubt on the question of who is in charge of the universe, the Bible portrays a God whose plans unfold in conversation with his people and in response to the longings and desires of their hearts. 

Pentecost and “After Pentecost” in the Book of Acts. It seems only appropriate that during this “After Pentecost” season we read what the Book of Acts says about what happened in the early church “After Pentecost.” And so, we will be reading through Acts through the end of August. We will see the unfolding impact of Pentecost as the work Jesus “began to do” while on earth in the Gospel according to Luke (Acts 1:1) continues and expands in ever widening circles, “in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8b). As Isaac Watts’s great hymn puts it, “Jesus shall reign where’er the sun does its successive journeys run.”  

Two notes of interest: Despite everything else (Jesus’s amazing return from the dead, his convincing proofs, and his 40 days of teachings “about the kingdom of God”—Acts 1:3), the disciples are preoccupied with one question. They persist in asking, “Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?” (Acts 1:6).  

A most understandable question, given the Old Testament history that we are reading during these months. Jesus’s answer is oblique: he’s unwilling to discuss times and seasons the Father has set in his own sovereignty. Rather, Jesus assures them that the Holy Spirit will give them power (dunamis) from on high so they can be his witnesses around the world. Implicitly, he is answering in terms of a kingly rule that he will exercise through them as Ascended Lord. Through their gospel witness (augmented by Paul later), people will be turned from the dominion of darkness to light, and from the authority of Satan to God. In other words, Jesus answers his disciples as he had answered Pilate some 43 days prior, at his trial: “My Kingdom is not of this world” (John 18:36). Now he indicates that the witnesses to Jesus’s life, death, resurrection, and ascension are participating in Jesus’s kingly rule and its expansion.  

A second note of interest: just as Hannah knew that no baby was going to be given her without impassioned pleas to Yahweh her Lord, the disciples know that they’re not going anywhere until they have prayed and the Spirit has fallen. And so we are left with the assembly, the eleven remaining (following their abandonment by Judas Iscariot): “All these were constantly devoting themselves to prayer, together with certain women, including Mary the mother of Jesus, as well as his brothers” (Acts 1:14).  

The takeaway for you and me today is twofold: God’s kingdom will come in his own time and in his own way. Still, in some wondrously mysterious fashion, our earnest prayers play their own part.  

Collect of the Reign of Christ. Almighty and everlasting God, whose will it is to restore all things in your well-beloved Son, the King of kings and Lord of lords: Mercifully grant that the peoples of the earth, divided and enslaved by sin, may be freed and brought together under his most gracious rule; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen. 

Be blessed this day,  

Reggie Kidd+ 

Test Yourselves - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Friday • 6/16/2023 
Friday of the Second Week After Pentecost (Proper 5) 

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 69; Ecclesiasticus 45:6–16; 2 Corinthians 12:11–21; Luke 19:41–48  

And Saturday’s epistle: 2 Corinthians 13:1–14 

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 2nd Week After Pentecost. We are in Proper 5 of Year 1 of the Daily Office Lectionary.  

This morning’s readings in Ecclesiasticus and Luke make poignant bookends.  

Ecclesiasticus offers praise of Aaron, highlighting the way the high priest’s fabulous garb served his role in bringing together the Lord and his people. On Aaron’s chest he bore precious stones “in a setting of gold, the work of a jeweler, to commemorate in engraved letters each of the tribes of Israel.” Atop his head he wore “a gold crown upon his turban, inscribed like a seal with ‘Holiness’” (Ecclesiasticus 45:11,12).  

By contrast, Luke records Jesus weeping as he approaches Jerusalem and its temple—a temple that had never known as much finery as was being lavished ever since Herod the Great launched his renovation project forty-six years prior. In Jesus’s estimation, however, religiosity had become robbery. Pomp had produced plunder rather than prayer. The master of the house, and its true and final High Priest, weeps as he begins to clean house: “Then he entered the temple and began to drive out those who were selling things there; and he said, ‘It is written, ‘My house shall be a house of prayer’; but you have made it a den of robbers’” (Luke 19:45).  

Image: Mosaic of St Paul in Westminster Cathedral. "St Paul the Apostle" by Lawrence OP is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 

The Corinthians, too, have profaned a sacred space. That sacred space is the Corinthians themselves, for as the church, they are God’s holy dwelling place. It is this profanation that Paul has been contending so hard to reverse in his two letters to them, and it is why he includes in today’s reading a warning against their broken relationships and their sexual misbehavior: “I fear that there may perhaps be quarreling, jealousy, anger, selfishness, slander, gossip, conceit, and disorder. I fear … I may have to mourn over many who previously sinned and have not repented of the impurity, sexual immorality, and licentiousness that they have practiced” (2 Corinthians 12:20–21).   

 Together, as “one body with many members,” the Corinthians comprise God’s temple (1 Corinthians 3:16). The whole is God’s temple, but so is each member. For Paul can say of each believer, “your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit” (1 Corinthians 6:19). Believers are God’s temple corporately, and each is God’s temple individually. That’s an extraordinary feature of the Christian faith. God has committed himself to living among us in one particular human person, his Son Jesus Christ, and that makes the “all” and the “each” equally important.  

The problem at Corinth is twofold. By their factious and fractious relationships, the Corinthians defile the corporate temple. At the same time, by their sexual libertinism they defile the individual temple.  

And so Paul challenges them: “Test yourselves” (heautous dokimazete—2 Corinthians 13:5b). It’s the same term Paul uses when he encourages the Romans to “prove” (dokimazein) what is the will of God (Romans 12:1). It’s not like the test that (hypothetical) mean professors write when they try to fail students. It’s like the test that good professors write when they are trying to help students pull things together and show what they know. What is the test? “[S]ee,” Paul says, if you are “living in the faith.” He genuinely believes that they belong to “new creation,” and so he urges them to “rejoice, set things right, and be encouraged” (2 Corinthians 13:11b NET).  

“Set things right,” he says. What’s that look like? Well, rather than selfishly quarrel and press their own priorities, predilections, prejudices, and preferences on each other, Paul wants them to strive for peace with one another. He wants them to learn to work toward agreeing with one another (which has to begin with listening to one another!). “[A]gree with one another, live in peace; and the God of love and peace will be with you” (2 Corinthians 13:11c,d).  

“Greet one another with a holy kiss” (2 Corinthians 13:12). He wants, as well, kisses that are holy, not unholy—which would mean embraces that are chaste, not licentious; and words that are edifying, not debasing. It means valuing one another as precious image-bearers rather than as potential partners in impermissible behavior, or objects for pleasure, or victims of exploitation. It means not reverting back to old patterns of defiling the wedding bed (1 Corinthians 5) or other practices that Paul (along with the rest of Scripture) considers to be out of bounds. From such practices they had been rescued (1 Corinthians 6:9,15): “[Y]ou 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).  

And always, always, always, Paul wants for these Corinthians what Jesus wants for them (and for us as well): “I do not want what is yours but you…” (2 Corinthians 12:14). May you and I live in the joy of being wanted, loved, and rejoiced over by the one who died in weakness for us but now lives in power within, for, and through us.  

Be blessed this day,  

Reggie Kidd+ 

Sing Praises of Famous Men - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Thursday • 6/15/2023 
Thursday of the Second Week After Pentecost (Proper 5) 

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 70; Psalm 71; Ecclesiasticus 44:19–45:5; 2 Corinthians 12:1–10; Luke 19:28–40 

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 2nd Week After Pentecost, and our readings come from Proper 5 of Year 1 in the Daily Office Lectionary.  

Ecclesiasti-what?! The Old Testament readings for today through Sunday come from latter chapters in the Book of Ecclesiasticus, otherwise known as the Wisdom of Ben Sirach. Ecclesiasticus provided the curriculum for Jewish scribes-in-training in the second century before Christ. This book is regarded as fully Scripture in the Catholic and Orthodox traditions, but as having a lesser authority in Jewish and Protestant circles. Our Daily Office selections offer a brief summary of Israel’s history from Abraham through Samuel in anticipation of this coming Monday’s launch into the history of the kingship in Israel.  

The overall theme of this portion of Ecclesiasticus is stated at the beginning of this chapter: “Let us now sing the praises of famous men, our ancestors in their generations.” Abraham was found faithful. Isaac received assurance. Jacob distributed the inheritance. Moses was godly and beloved of God, and he was consecrated because of his faithfulness and meekness. Always good to keep such things in mind.  

Image: Hortus Deliciarum, Public Domain. 

2 Corinthians: reluctant self-revelations. For his part, the apostle Paul is embarrassed to have to keep talking about what it is about his own life that should command a following from the Corinthians (a church which he himself had founded!). Chiefly, he has been at pains to talk about his apostolic sufferings, in imitation of Christ.  

Nonetheless, so much is at stake with these Corinthian believers whom he loves, that he reluctantly, even with significant embarrassment, speaks of something that eclipses anything his opponents could offer. He has been taken up into the very abode of God (the “third heaven,” beyond the first heaven of our atmosphere and beyond the second heaven of the stars in the sky). There he has seen and heard things he can neither describe nor explain. To imagine the scenario, I suppose we have to think in terms of the imagery of the Book of Revelation, especially chapters 4 and 5. Though of such things Paul himself will not speak.  

There is a tradition of mystical experiences that are called apophatic, meaning, “unspoken” or “unspeakable.” Experiences that make a person say, not to put it too colloquially, “Well, shut my mouth!” Experiences that can only be responded to with stunned and awestruck silence. Paul has been there. His opponents haven’t. So, maybe they should shut their mouths! 

Then Paul turns on a dime. He insists that to keep him from being overly impressed with himself, “to keep me from being too elated, a thorn was given me in the flesh” (2 Corinthians 12:7). This “messenger from Satan” Paul will describe no further. That fact hasn’t kept interpreters from speculating: an affliction of the eye? a besetting temptation? a guilt-ridden conscience? Perhaps Paul’s silence on the matter is good, because it means every one of us can more easily relate. Every person I know can write themselves into this story! We all have things we’d just as soon be rid of. But we nonetheless sense that the Lord does deeper work in us by ministering to us through them than he would if he were to rescue us from them. In other words, he allows us to see the necessity of dependence upon him. 

Paul’s thrice-prayed prayer for deliverance has been answered simply: “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Corinthians 12:9). I offer my own paraphrase: “You don’t need less of that, my child. You need more of me.” The invitation is there for each of us to write ourselves into this story, and along with Paul, to exclaim: “I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me. Therefore I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities for the sake of Christ; for whenever I am weak, then I am strong” (2 Corinthians 12:9–10).  

Luke: into Jerusalem. We readers know that Jesus’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem is deeply ironic and full of pathos, for it will lead in less than a week to the ignominy and apparent defeat of the cross. However, Luke’s version of the entry encapsulates some preciously enduring truths that transcend the irony. Here, indeed, is the King that Psalm 118 had envisioned as Savior of God’s people. Joyful praise is altogether appropriate to his advent: “the whole multitude of the disciples began to praise God joyfully with a loud voice for all the deeds of power that they had seen” (Luke 19:37). And their song of joy forms a gorgeous inclusio to the angels’ song for the shepherds of Bethlehem: “Peace in heaven, and glory in the highest heaven!” (Luke 19:38—see Luke 2:14).  

At Luke 19:40, Jesus says even the rocks will cry out in praise if we can’t. But we can! We can cry out in praise while seeking to emulate the faithfulness of old covenant saints. We can praise in “shut-my-mouth” visions or in “dear-Lord-deliver-me” trials. May we never outlive our wonder at the King who comes to save!  

Be blessed this day,  

Reggie Kidd+