Thinking Large - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Friday • 9/29/2023 •

We’re taking a detour from the Daily Office readings for a few days. Instead, we’ll be thinking through various facets of worship and how our Lord provides meaningful communion with him through our formal corporate worship as well as in individual worship in our daily devotions. The thoughts offered here are excerpts from articles I wrote for Worship Leader magazine a few years ago.   

Sing a Widescreen, HD Paradise 

I am unutterably grateful when a Christian artist enables me to see spiritual reality in widescreen, high-definition. Ephrem the Syrian, a brilliant hymn writer for his era (ca. 306-373), does that for me. His lyrics – especially his Hymns on Paradise– still captivate.  

The beauties (of Paradise) are much diminished  
by being depicted in the pale colors  
with which you are familiar.* 

* All quotations from Ephrem are in Ephrem & Sebastian Brock, St. Ephrem: Hymns on Paradise (St. Vladimirs Seminary Press, 1998).

Sing the Power of Metaphor 

Ephrem trumpeted the mystery of Christ’s incarnation. He resisted the demands of those who “over thought” the faith. They insisted on a straightforward explanation of Christ’s person, one that fit normal categories of reason: God or Man? Which is it?  

One group wanted to make Christ just like us, merely human. OK, maybe not merely human, but certainly more human than divine. A different group wanted to make Christ so divine that his humanity was nothing more than apparent – “drive-by” at best.  

Ephrem’s response: God doesn’t give us neat, tidy definitions. Instead, he provides a profound relationship with Someone the Bible describes in elegant metaphors and similes: 

[God] clothed Himself in language, 
so that he might clothe us 
in his mode of life. 

In one place He was like an Old Man 
and the Ancient of Days, 
then again, He became like a Hero, 
a valiant Warrior. 
For the purpose of judgment He was an Old Man, 
but for conflict He was Valiant. 

Grace clothed itself in our likeness 
in order to bring us to the likeness of itself. 

He gave us divinity, 
We gave him humanity. 

Sing the Whole of the Human Story 

Ephrem celebrated the scale and sweep of Christ’s mission. He refused the heresy of mystical Narcissism. Back then, many were looking for a personal experience of “mystery,” just a little spiritual “somethin’ somethin” to help them get through. Today their spiritual descendants turn to Jesus as some sort of “rabbit’s foot,” a personal avatar they can enlist to make their lives (of which they remain firmly in control) turn out better.   

To counteract the spiritual Narcissism of his day, Ephrem wrote his Hymns of Paradise against a backdrop that includes the whole of the human story. My salvation comes with everybody else’s; everybody else’s includes mine. Thus (though it rather stretches the actual biblical text), Ephrem built on Hellenistic Jewish notions about Adam’s name coming from a Greek acrostic:  

“A” (Anatolē = East)  
“D” (Dusis = West)  
“A” (Arktos = North)  
“M” (Mesēmbria = South).  

[God’s] hand took from every quarter  
and created Adam, 
so has he now been scattered in every quarter… 
For progression is from the universe to Adam, 
and then from him to the universe.  

The old Adam is all of us (“from the universe to Adam”); the new Adam came for all of us (“from him to the universe”). For this reason, Christ’s followers come from all quarters of the globe and our mission is to go to all quarters of the globe.  

Sing the Whole of Christ’s Work 

And while then as now, many well-meaning believers whittle down Jesus’s work to one manageable dimension, Ephrem challenged believers to think large so they can thank large.  

Thus, Ephrem sings redemption’s story across a wide canvas: from original Paradise to a new, pristine Paradise. From the loss of Adam and Eve’s original “Robe of Glory,” to the Second Adam’s “putting on the body” from Mary, to His laying the “Robe of Glory” for us in Jordan’s baptismal waters, to our “putting on Christ” in our baptism, and finally to our being “Robed in Glory” at resurrection. Ephrem sings that the angel’s sword barring us from the Tree of Life becomes a centurion’s lance opening the way into Paradise:   

Whereas we had left that Garden 
along with Adam, as he left it behind, 
now that the sword has been removed by the lance,  
we may return there. 

Sing Widescreen, HD 

At the invention of the small-screen, black and white, low-definition television, who could have imagined today’s widescreen, color, HD home theatre systems? Today’s experience makes yesterday’s seem, to use Ephrem the Syrian’s terms, “diminished” and “pale” by comparison.  

Ephrem offers us a glimpse into a reality that “has come” and “is coming” where the colors are even more vibrant and the definition even sharper than we’ve yet begun to imagine.  

May God grant the grace to grow in our capacity to worship in yet bolder colors, more vibrant textures, sweeter sounds, and sharper shapes. The reality is that good.  

Be blessed this day,  

Reggie Kidd+ 

Happy Little Trees - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Thursday • 9/28/2023 •

We’re taking a detour from the Daily Office readings for a few days. Instead, we’ll be thinking through various facets of worship and how our Lord provides meaningful communion with him through our formal corporate worship as well as in individual worship in our daily devotions. The thoughts offered here are excerpts from articles I wrote for Worship Leader magazine a few years ago.   

“Happy Little Trees” 

On her birthday Meg’s husband told her he didn’t love her and wasn’t sure he ever had. Seven months after the divorce became final, he married his girlfriend. By a happy coincidence Meg was out of town visiting my family the day of her ex-husband’s wedding.  

How to spend that day? We discovered that the late Bob Ross, host and star of the TV show  The Joy of Painting, had established a teaching studio in nearby New Smyrna Beach, FL. His students still teach people how to paint “happy little trees.” The promise was that in a 3-hour session we could learn the basics, and each student would walk away with a personally completed work of art. We signed up for a class. 

Image: "Bob Ross FD3S" by zanthrax-dot-nl is licensed under CC BY 2.0 

It was amazingly fun. We happened to sit on the back row. We couldn’t help but notice the two teenage girls in front of us who didn’t fit the middle-class profile of most of the people in the room. They were accompanied by someone who carried herself like a softer version of SNL’s “church lady.” Nobody in the class was having more fun, or experiencing more delighted surprise, at what was showing up on canvas, than these girls.  

At the end of the class, we were all given the opportunity to pay a little extra to have our paintings framed – right there on the spot. Who wouldn’t want to do that after discovering they could actually paint something not just recognizable, but really kind of cool?!  

I failed to catch the wistfulness on the two girls’ faces as they watched classmates’ paintings being framed. But Meg noticed. Quietly, she asked the proprietor if she could pay for the girls’ frames. Stunned, he obliged. The girls were thrilled.  

My throat tightened. I knew that Meg’s divorce had strained her in every way, financially as well as emotionally. Yet as deep as the sorrow she carried within her was, her spiritual resources were deeper. On a day in which she could have nursed bitterness, she created joy for someone else.  

Meg’s act was horizontal worship. The Gospel changes us from self-centered to other-centered. Vertical worship teaches people that they are profoundly loved; the bread and wine that they take in makes them different people. As theologian Alexander Schmemann quips: “At this meal we become what we eat.” That day Meg did a lot more than paint “happy little trees.” She became bread and wine to two girls, a shop owner – and me.  

Be blessed this day,  

Reggie Kidd+ 

We Need a Change of Clothes - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Wednesday • 9/27/2023 •

We’re taking a detour from the Daily Office readings for a few days. Instead, we’ll be thinking through various facets of worship and how our Lord provides meaningful communion with him through our formal corporate worship as well as in individual worship in our daily devotions. The thoughts offered here are excerpts from articles I wrote for Worship Leader magazine a few years ago.   

Undressed for Church 

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

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

Room to Grow 

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

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

Early Church 

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

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

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

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

Overdressed 

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

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

Welcome to Transformation 

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

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

Be blessed this day, 

Reggie Kidd+ 

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

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

The Peace of the Lord - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Tuesday • 9/26/2023 •

We’re taking a detour from the Daily Office readings for a few days. Instead, we’ll be thinking through various facets of worship and how our Lord provides meaningful communion with him through our formal corporate worship as well as in individual worship in our daily devotions. The thoughts offered here are excerpts from articles I wrote for Worship Leader magazine a few years ago.   

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

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

I think that’s a good thing.   

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

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

That was Awkward.  

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

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

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

Welcoming Peace 

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

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

Healing Peace  

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

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

Possible applications: 

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

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

The peace of the Lord be always with you, 

Reggie Kidd+ 

Game-Saving Wisdom - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Monday • 9/25/2023 •

We’re taking a detour from the Daily Office readings for a few days. Instead, we’ll be thinking through various facets of worship and how our Lord provides meaningful communion with him through our formal corporate worship as well as in individual worship in our daily devotions. The thoughts offered here are excerpts from articles I wrote for Worship Leader magazine a few years ago.   

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

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

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

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

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

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

Divinity 

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

Humanity 

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

Integrity 

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

Dignity 

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

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

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

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

Be blessed this day,  

Reggie Kidd+  

Ten Words - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Friday • 9/22/2023 •

Welcome to Daily Office Devotions, I’m Reggie Kidd, I’m glad to be with you on this Friday in the Season After Pentecost. We are taking a detour from the Daily Office readings for a few days. Instead, we are thinking through various facets of worship and how our Lord provides meaningful communion with him through our formal corporate worship as well as in individual worship in our daily devotions. The thoughts offered here are excerpts from articles I wrote for Worship Leader magazine a few years ago.   

Ten Words  

The most remarkable worship leader I ever knew didn’t lead singing. He didn’t play an instrument. Robert Webber (1933–2007) was an evangelical theologian who happened to fall in love with ancient liturgy. He held the past in one outstretched arm and the future in the other and proclaimed: “What Christ has joined together, let not the church put asunder.”   

Worship practitioners are also worship theologians. We always implement a theology of worship when we lead. Our job description may put us more or less “in control” of that theology. But most of us have some say in its shaping. Here are “ten words” from Webber – six from his liturgical, and four from his evangelical sensibility – that may serve you in your vision of what worship can be.    

Doxology. We gather for one thing: to honor God. Worship, of course, includes education and evangelism. It may even be entertaining. But worship is first and last doxological. Thus, it is theocentric, not narcissistic. Worship celebrates Christ as the central cosmic figure of the universe. Worship features God’s story, not our nation’s, not our favorite team’s, not our denominational tribe’s.  

Mystery. If God could be figured out or if he could be understood in his entirety, he wouldn’t be God. Sometimes he’s more real in his silence than in our answers. Some things get killed when they are over-explained. They just have to be allowed to be – to be experienced, not parsed.  

Incarnation. But God hasn’t left us in mystified befuddlement. He came in the very flesh of what we are. Jesus came as one of us, in order to redeem a creation God had made to be “good.” He reclaimed the world for God, so we tend it. He re-appropriated time, so we reshape it: B.C. and A.D.  

Sacraments. Christ meets us as material beings in material stuff. We’re not just dust. We’re not just spirit. We’re unified beings: dust that God has breathed into. We have ears to hear. Hands to raise. We have knees to kneel. Lips to drink, tongues to taste, noses to smell. 

History. This is the “Be true to your school” principle (via the Beach Boys). No matter how our church got its name (e.g., such-and-such saint, such-and-such street, such-and-such one word), every church came from somewhere. And we can help it be the best St. Matthew’s or Delaney Street or Cornerstone or whatever.  

Catholicity. This is the complementary principle that comes from St. Vincent of Lérins: “What has been believed everywhere, always, and by all.” Before there was a Reformation with its Confessions, Revivals with their sawdust trails, the Jesus Movement with its “New Song,” or Emergence with its eclecticism, there was a Great Church that gave us the Creeds and a remarkably common pattern of worship.  

Orthodoxy. Life is at stake in our holding forth true theological truths. It matters that there is one God in three persons (one hope for humanity because of the eternal community of love). It matters that Jesus is truly God and truly man (he has the authority to forgive and the nearness to heal). It matters that his work saves from the guilt of sin, from the despair of death, from the lovelessness of loneliness.  

Scripture. Evangelicals embrace Scripture as a non-negotiable formal principle. Wisely, we refuse the serpent’s hiss: “Hath God really said?” At the same time, the classical liturgy is Scripture-saturated and Scripture-shaped in ways that evangelical worship often is not (even if too many in liturgical churches are reluctant to confess the Bible’s absolute authority). How powerful it is when evangelical and liturgical sensibilities merge.  

Image:  Cathedral Church of St. Luke, Orlando, Florida (adaptation of Theo Gordon photo) 

Conversion. Each person matters. The actual faith of individual worshipers matters. It doesn’t matter how “cool” the ad-libbed prayer. It doesn’t matter how profound the historical litany. Neither means anything apart from regenerate hearts and personal faith. Worship tells God’s story so new characters can take their place in the storyline.  

Mission. The Spirit who raised Jesus from the dead and indwells us impels us into the world in mission. The worshiping church is neither a museum of quaint antiquities nor a mall of religious exotica. It’s an Ark, says St. Augustine, a place that offers refuge to sojourners “in this wicked world as in a deluge.” Into its walls of safety the one Righteous Man draws those who otherwise would drown, and then makes them co-heralds of his victory over sin and death, his Father’s love for sinners still outside, and the Spirit’s power to rescue them as well.  

Be blessed this day,  

Reggie Kidd+ 

Be Silent and Listen - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Thursday • 9/21/2023 •

Welcome to Daily Office Devotions, I’m Reggie Kidd, I’m glad to be with you on this Thursday in the Season After Pentecost. We are taking a detour from the Daily Office readings for a few days. Instead, we are thinking through various facets of worship and how our Lord provides meaningful communion with him through our formal corporate worship as well as in individual worship in our daily devotions. The thoughts offered here are excerpts from articles I wrote for Worship Leader magazine a few years ago.   

Be Still  

“Mr. Kidd, your mom’s heart is pumping blood as if she was 20 years old, not 91,” explains the ER doctor. 

Flabbergasted, I reply, “OK, so why’s she in the ER?” 

“She has congestive heart failure. (Pause, apparently taking in the blank look on my face.) Your heart has to have a constricting strength to pump blood out. She’s got plenty of that. But your heart also has to have an expanding strength to receive blood. Your mom’s heart is losing that ability. If the heart can’t relax and expand, blood can’t enter, and fluid gets backed up in the body. Eventually the congestion will take her out and cause her death. All we can do is manage things until that happens. I’m sorry.” 

Several months later my mom’s congestive heart failure was indeed being managed … for the time being. She was doing well, even if, as she said, “Getting old will either make you tough or kill you!” 

Heart Health 

My mom’s particular heart ailment – power-to-pump-out-but-not-to-take-in – had given me pause, though. I think of my laundry-list prayer life, and of my affection for non-stop, high-octane, über-decibel worship. Of all the pressures I feel to be producing, conducting, crafting, designing, tweaking, critiquing, supervising, and leading worship. I wonder about my spiritual heart-health – and that of those I’m leading.  

Shortly after my mom’s hospital stay, the Robert. E. Webber Institute for Worship Studies, where I teach, was in session. I was accustomed to then-Chaplain Darrell Harris leading our morning devotions with unusual spiritual perceptivity. But one morning I was caught unawares.  

I can’t go into detail – but let’s just say I was mired in some inner conflict. So, I’m pouring myself into the praise and prayer, looking to “worship” my way out of the funk. After his message Darrell says, “We go now to a period of silence. By silence, I mean silence. I don’t mean silent prayer. I don’t mean silent meditation on Scripture. I don’t mean rehearse your day’s schedule. I mean: be still. Be quiet, and just listen.”  

We knelt, and sang a lovely setting of “Be Still” (from Psalm 46:10a) that Darrell and Eric Wyse had written.  

Image: Fra Angelico , Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons 

Take in 

Then the silence set in – glorious quiet, healing peace, grace-filled silence. I felt my heart relax and expand. I felt Spirit entering. I felt conflict flee. When, after a few minutes passed, we rose to sing “The Lord’s Prayer” (Eric Wyse’s version is something of an IWS anthem) I rose a different person.  

In that moment I realized why the ancients revered silence, why many sought the desert, wanting to hear a voice the city drowned out. They knew the vision of God was a “Well, shut my mouth!” sort of affair: “The Lord is in his holy temple, let all the earth be silent before him” (Habakkuk 2:20). They noticed that in Scripture some visions demand modesty of expression: “Do not write this down” (Revelation 10:4). They observed that even in heaven itself when something big is about to happen, silence may be what the moment requires: “When the Lamb opened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven for about a half an hour” (Revelation 8:1). They perceived that, like Job, if you get the audience you wish for with God you just may have to say: “I lay my hand on my mouth” (Job 40:4-5).  

Worship needs the same sort of rhythm our hearts require. Pump out: “I lift my hands in praise, for you are majestic and mighty and worthy of honor.” Take in: “You are merciful and tender of heart, and yet unsearchable in your judgments and inscrutable in your ways – and so I bow and wait and listen in silence.”   

Be blessed this day,  

Reggie Kidd+  

Telling Time by Jesus - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Wednesday • 9/20/2023 •

Welcome to Daily Office Devotions, I’m Reggie Kidd, I’m glad to be with you on this Wednesday in the Season After Pentecost. We are taking a detour from the Daily Office readings for a few days. Instead, we are thinking through various facets of worship and how our Lord provides meaningful communion with him through our formal corporate worship as well as in individual worship in our daily devotions. The thoughts offered here are excerpts from articles I wrote for Worship Leader magazine a few years ago.   

Telling Time by Jesus 

Roger wears two watches. Because he travels a lot, he sets the watch on his left wrist to whatever time zone he happens to be in. He sets the watch on his right wrist to the time zone “back home” in Switzerland, where his heart always is and where his family lives.  

Stability on the right wrist gives him equilibrium for all the changes on his left.  

Lost in Time 

A church is like a person whose left wrist is lined with watches that demand we keep up with different “time zones” all at the same time. There’s church programming for the fall. There’s Christmas ramp-up. There’s the first of the year blues. There’s Easter ramp-up. There’s the summer doldrums. There’s always some sports season time that affects people’s attendance and attention span (are we on NFL, NBA, or MLB time?). There’s “Hallmark” time (Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, Memorial Day, Independence Day).  

God gave Israel a pattern of life, from the beginning of the year at Rosh Hashanah. Thus he taught her to number her days according to his provision for spiritual and physical life. The church understood – and so Paul taught them – not to come under the calendar as law (see Gal. 4:10). Nonetheless, the church also understood – and so Paul also taught them – that Christ has brought “the fullness of time,” the time of “new creation” (Gal 4:7; 6:15).  

Image: Image: from "My 2006 March Madness picks" by jakebouma is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0; "Happy 4th of July! The American Flag in Fireworks" by Beverly & Pack is marked with CC PDM 1.0; Arturo Pardavila III from Hoboken, NJ, USA, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons; Super Bowl image – public domain 

Christ Our Measure 

Over time, the church sensed that we needed to “name” the time that God had “claimed.” And so over the first several centuries of the church a fairly wide consensus emerged that we would order our days according to the life of Jesus Christ.  

The Christian New Year begins with Advent, the four Sundays before Christmas when we anticipate the incarnation of our Lord. We rehearse the Old Testament promises and the annunciation to Mary. We remember that Christ has come, and we celebrate the fact that Christ does come now in our lives and will come again at the end of the age.  

Celebrate 

From December 25 and for the next 12 days (the original “12 Days of Christmas”) we rejoice in his birth. We exult at the fact that Christ’s incarnation is the beginning of the destruction of all that is evil.  

From January 6 up until Ash Wednesday, we celebrate Epiphany, the “Manifestation” of Christ in his mission to become Lord of the whole world. Here, worship focuses on Christ’s baptism, his turning water into wine, his teaching, healing, and preaching – and his transfiguration as he prepares to journey to Jerusalem.  

Reflection, Fasting and Prayer 

Beginning on Ash Wednesday, in anticipation of Easter we spend 40 days considering the call of the cross, a season called Lent. Lent climaxes with Holy Week: Palm Sunday, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Holy Saturday (concluding with the best kept secret of the Christian year, the Great Easter Vigil).  

Easter is more than a day – it’s a season, running from Easter Sunday to Pentecost Sunday, fifty days later: 7 weeks of Easter! While many modern churches put more of their energy into celebrating Christmas, the ancient church highlighted Easter. Christ lives, and so shall we! During the Easter season, worship emphasizes Christ’s post-resurrection appearances and teachings.  

The Great Mission 

From fifty days after Easter to the first Sunday in Advent (almost half the calendar year!) we celebrate Pentecost and the pouring out of the Holy Spirit. At Pentecost in Jerusalem, the Holy Spirit reversed the curse of Babel and launched the church’s mission to the nations. The extended Pentecost season gives us ample opportunity to reflect on our place in that great mission.  

In the Christian calendar, the church offers a timepiece for the “right wrist” that anchors us in the “back home” of God and his story. We’re not just passing time according to the secular calendar or sports seasons or greeting cards. We are defined by our relationship with Christ, and he is the one by whom we tell time.  

Be blessed this day,  

Reggie Kidd+ 

The Power of Song - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Tuesday • 9/19/2023 •

Welcome to Daily Office Devotions, I’m Reggie Kidd, I’m glad to be with you on this Tuesday in the Season After Pentecost. We are taking a detour from the Daily Office readings for a few days. Instead, we are thinking through various facets of worship and how our Lord provides meaningful communion with him through our formal corporate worship as well as in individual worship in our daily devotions. The thoughts offered here are excerpts from articles I wrote for Worship Leader magazine a few years ago.   

Singing the “Symbol” 

“So say we all!” began as a fortunate ad lib by actor Edward James Olmos in his role as Commander Adama during a rally-the-troops speech in Syfy’s television series Battlestar Galactica. The line became a communal ceremonial affirmation of humans in their battle against the genocidal Cylons and in their galaxy-wide quest for a new homeland. Whenever I’d hear members of the Colonial Fleet raise the shout on their way to fight the Cylons, I’d recall from the book of Exodus the gathering on Mount Sinai. There, God’s people heard God’s Word and twice roared, “All that the Lord has said, we will do!” as they prepared for the covenantal sacrificial act and the meal by which God and his people bound their lives to one another (Exodus 24:1-11).   

Singing: Bridge and Invitation 

I have come to love many features of worship with friends who emulate early Christian worship. No feature more so than the way we bridge from the ministry of the Word to the ministry of the Table. Having heard the Word read and proclaimed, we use the Nicene Creed to voice our “So say we all!” Then, and only then, are we ready to pray for the needs of the world and to break bread in the presence of our God and King. Placed right there, the Creed invites us to “re-enlist” in a cause that is more momentous than war against mere cybernetic enemies and in a quest that is also more assured than Adama’s for a New Earth.  

The Presbyterian church of my upbringing taught the baptismal creed: the Apostles’ Creed. But my Episcopal/Anglican friends use the church’s Eucharistic creed: the Nicene Creed. It spells out in greater detail the significance of Christ’s incarnation: that he who “for us and for our salvation came down from heaven and became incarnate” is “true God from true God.”  

The Nicene Creed came to be called “The Symbol of the Faith.” It stood as the best summary of the truths for which Christians had to contend during the first half-millennium of the church’s existence (issues which have only become more urgent in the 21st century): the Savior had the authority to save because he was divine, and the ability to do so because he had become one of us.  

Power of Song 

What is not often appreciated is that for centuries (emerging as custom probably in the 4th century and becoming a matter of decree with Charlemagne in the 9th), it was normal for the Creed to be sung as part of the worship service. Because it was not merely recited, but sung, the Creed took on the features of a “national anthem” for citizens of the Kingdom of Heaven. These days, ordinarily when Protestants use the Nicene Creed, they simply recite it. Maybe that’s a loss (though on festival days at the Cathedral Church of St. Luke in Orlando, we chant the Creed in monotone, accompanied by improvisation on the organ).  

Intrigued by the idea of singing it, and also because it’s embarrassing for me to have to read the Creed while all the cradle-to-grave Episcopalians around me say it from memory, I came upon plainsong chant versions in the hymnal, one in a minor key that feels a little like “O the Deep, Deep Love of Jesus,” and one in a major key that feels a lot like “Of the Father’s Love Begotten.”*  

Three surprises: 1) how easy it has been to memorize the text as song; 2) how differently the two tunes nuance the text; 3) and most importantly, how having the chanted Creed in my being makes its truth sing in my soul.  

Many Songs, One Voice 

There are many ways to declare the faith in worship, from Martin Luther’s “A Mighty Fortress,” to Graham Kendrick’s “We Believe,” to Rich Mullins’ “Creed,” to the simplest affirmations of God’s goodness, like Darrell Evans’ “Trading My Sorrow” (“Yes, Lord, yes, Lord, yes, yes, Lord, Amen!”). We all have different settings … and different souls.  

For all of us, though, there’s a power in how singing the faith anchors truth in us, augmenting what we know, re-focusing what we read, and shaping what we practice. There’s a Presence in how singing the faith binds us together, making us both His and one another’s. “So say we all!” 

Be blessed this day,  

Reggie Kidd+ 

* Respectively, S 103 in the Episcopalian Hymnal 1982, and S 361 in the Hymnal 1982 Accompaniment Edition. 

The Word Became Flesh - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Monday • 9/18/2023 •

Welcome to Daily Office Devotions, I’m Reggie Kidd, I’m glad to be with you on this Monday in the Season After Pentecost. We are taking a detour from the Daily Office readings for a few days. Instead, we are thinking through various facets of worship and how our Lord provides meaningful communion with him through our formal corporate worship as well as in individual worship in our daily devotions. The thoughts offered here are excerpts from articles I wrote for Worship Leader magazine a few years ago.   

Mystery Matters 

Ahmed: Our religions are the same. You call him Elohim and I call him Allah. Both words mean the same thing: “God.” We both believe Jesus is God’s Son and was born of a virgin. We both believe he will come again at the end of time. 

Me: But do you worship Jesus, Ahmed?  

Ahmed: Of course not, that would be blasphemy! The Son is not the same as Allah.  

Me: Then, no, friend, our religions are not the same.  

In my conversation with Ahmed, I realized how easy Christianity’s “sell” would be if we could just accept the logic that if there is one and only one God, then Father, Son, and Holy Spirit can’t each be God.  

The church of the first half-millennium bequeathed to us a fabulous gift: their stubborn refusal to surrender the lessons they had learned from Scripture and in worship to other voices. 

One voice said: “Just put Jesus a little below the Father and as high above us as we wish. Make Jesus a fellow creature with us, one through whom we worship, but not one to whom we offer worship.”  

Image: The Infant Jesus, oil on canvas, attributed to “Old Master,” Italian,  17th century 

Its opposite said: “Elevate Jesus so far above us that he becomes just a ‘face’ that God condescends to use to communicate with us without dragging him down to a material existence.”  

Make Jesus less than fully divine or less than fully human. Either way, he becomes more plausible, more understandable … more, well, marketable.  If early Christians had accepted either of these options – the one at the hands of Arians, the other at the hands of Gnostics – the church could have known early, easy success.  

As it is, though, Scripture told our spiritual forebears that “the Word became flesh.” Worship taught them both sides of the equation: THE WORD became flesh, and the Word BECAME FLESH.  

THE WORD: Only God Can Save 

Scripture teaches truths that worship shapes into habits of the heart. One is that only God can save. Even Jesus’ enemies recognized that statements like “Rise, your sins are forgiven” were claims to deity. John the Baptist declared Jesus to be “the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.” Instinctively, the church has translated that statement into prayer: “Lamb of God, you take away the sin of the world, have mercy on us.”  

Early Christians cultivated the habit of praying to Jesus: “You are seated at the right hand of the Father. Receive our prayer. You alone are the Holy One, you alone are the Lord, you alone are the Most High, Jesus Christ, with the Holy Spirit, in the glory of God the Father. Amen.” Thus, they insulated themselves from claims that the Word is less than fully divine.  

Most of us live in a cultural environment in which Jesus is considered a great man, perhaps larger than life, maybe even semi-divine. But not GOD. However, if he is not God, then he doesn’t really save. We’re left to try to save ourselves, however we define salvation. The greatest thing we can offer our secularist friends, our Muslim friends, our Jehovah’s Witness friends, is to worship not some generic “Lord,” but the distinctly Trinitarian God. This is the God who redeems – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.   

BECAME FLESH: Not a “Drive by” 

To some people, it seemed (and still seems) unworthy of God to think of him actually becoming human. So they sought (and still seek) to protect the purity of God by having a fully divine Christ, but one who sort of passed through Mary rather than took substance from her. Jesus’ humanity disappears, or at least withers. Unfortunately, then so does ours.  

Most Christians, however, understand that since our problem – sin – includes body, mind, soul, and spirit, so does our solution. To heal us and rescue us, Jesus had to become one of us. The incarnation was not a “drive by” salvation. Jesus has come, and is coming, in the flesh (compare 1 John 2:26 & 2 John 7). Thus, we look for new bodies, not angels’ wings.  

That’s why “matter matters” in worship. Baptismal waters are simultaneously “our tomb” (the death of the “old man”) and “our mother” (the birth of the “new man”), as Cyril, Jerusalem’s 4th century bishop put it. Anointing with oil at baptism (Greek: chrisma) makes us little “Christs.” Just as Jesus turned water into wine then, he now turns wine into blood, so that in Communion “we become one body and blood with Christ. In this way we become Christ-bearers (a Greek word from which comes the name ‘Christopher’) as his body and blood are spread around our limbs.” Thus, the kiss of peace at Communion is not just any old greeting, but an expression of “a union of souls.”* 

Here’s what I wish I had thought to say to Ahmed: The difference in our religions is a mystery you more experience in worship than figure out in your head. We worship Jesus because it’s the Son’s divinity that gives him the right to forgive. And we worship alongside Jesus because the Son has become our brother and made his Father ours.  

Be blessed this day, 

Reggie Kidd+ 

* References in Cyril are to his Mystagogic Catecheses 2.4; 3.1; 4.3; 5.3, in Lester Ruth, et al., Walking Where Jesus Walked: Worship in Fourth-Century Jerusalem (Eerdmans, 2010).  

Trust the One Who Is Right - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Friday • 9/15/2023 •
Friday of the Fifteenth Week After Pentecost (Proper 18) 

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 40; Psalm 54; 1 Kings 18:20–40; Philippians 3:1–16; Matthew 3:1–12 

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 in the Season After Pentecost. We are in Proper 18 of Year 1 of the Daily Office Lectionary.  

Being right vs. being made right. Somewhere along the way when I was growing up, I picked up the notion that I always had to be right. I had to know the answers, and I had to be 100% right about them. I lost a spelling bee in the fifth grade, and to this day, every occasion for using that word is an occasion to relive that crushing moment. If I got a 98% on a quiz, I would argue with my teacher for that additional 2%.  

For other people, the issues may be different: being the prettiest, being the star jock, being the “baddest,” or coming off as the wealthiest. It is all so exhausting. No wonder so many just give up.  

I gave up, too, because just at the point of exhaustion Paul’s words from today’s passage met me: “…that I may be found in him, not having my own righteousness…” (Philippians 3:9). Just when it began to occur to me that I would never know enough to justify my existence by always being right, along came Paul with a better claim than mine (“as to righteousness under the law, blameless”—Philippians 3:6). He said it was all garbage (actually, his term skubala means excrement). Skubala compared to “the supreme good of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord” (Philippians 3:8). And that, finally, was good enough for me, too.  

It was freeing to realize I didn’t have to justify my existence by being right all the time — which, ironically, gave me the freedom to pursue knowledge better. I had to trust the one who is right and who makes right: “…not having my own righteousness that comes from the law, but one that comes through (to render the Greek more literally) faith of Christ…” (Philippians 3:9).  

This phrase “faith of Christ” for Paul is multivalent—it is deep and fraught with meaning.  

In the first place, Paul means that Christ exercised faith towards God, and faithfully represented God on this earth. He knew his heavenly Father, and he was thus the first human to get God right. He believed his mission—set in eternity—was, in the thought-frame of Isaiah 53, death unto life. It was, on the one hand, to pour himself out to death, to bear the sin of many, to make intercession for transgressors, and therefore, on the other hand, to make many righteous, to find satisfaction in his knowledge, to see his offspring, to prolong his days, to be allotted a portion with the great, and to divide the spoil with the strong (Isaiah 53:8–12). Here on the earth as a man, Jesus trusted God to the point of allowing himself to die a criminal’s death for a world of criminals. He knew his Father’s promise to vindicate him by raising him up, and through him, to grant resurrection life to all who took refuge in him.  

Which takes us to the other side of “faith”: our faith in him. Our trusting that his death is ours. His death pays for our sins, sets a pattern for our giving up our own interests for the sake of others, and calls us to share in his sufferings. Faith is also our trusting that his resurrection likewise means our resurrection. It brings the birth of “the new man” within us, means the onboard presence of the living Christ in our lives, and promises that at the renewal of all things our very bodies will be made new like his.  

The bonus is that those who are “found in him” and who let go of everything else as so much skubala often find him giving much of it back. In him, those things are no longer worthless filth, but gifts that have been reclaimed, refurbished, redeemed, and ready to be used to his glory and for the welfare of others: whether smarts or looks or athletic prowess or moxie or resources. “For,” as Paul says elsewhere, “all things are yours, … the world or life or death or the present or the future—all belong to you, and you belong to Christ, and Christ belongs to God” (1 Corinthians 1:21b,22b,23).  

Collect for Proper 18: Grant us, O Lord, to trust in you with all our hearts; for, as you always resist the proud who confide in their own strength, so you never forsake those who make their boast of your mercy; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen. 

Be blessed this day,  

Reggie Kidd+