Interpreting the Word of God - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Wednesday • 11/15/2023 •
Wednesday of the Twenty-fourth Week After Pentecost (Proper 27) 

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 119:97–120; Nehemiah 7:73b-8:18; Revelation 18:21–24; Matthew 15:29-39 

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. This Wednesday in the Season After Pentecost our readings come from Proper 27 of Year 1 in the Daily Office Lectionary.  

Dimensions of worship. The daily lectionary’s three-week-long exploration of reform under Nehemiah as governor and Ezra as priest and scribe closes today with a snapshot of people at worship. Though there are several important features of worship in this passage, I found myself making notes on the reading and interpreting of Scripture in worship (on another occasion, perhaps we can explore other dimensions of worship in this passage, like congregational participation, the nature of historically informed sacred actions, and provision for the needy).  

Reading the Word of God. “[T[he priest Ezra brought the law before the assembly … He read from it facing the square before the Water Gate from early morning until midday … and the ears of all the people were attentive to the book of the law” (Nehemiah 8:3b). He may have read for what? four to six hours?!  

After Ezra and Nehemiah’s day, the practice of lengthy Scripture reading carried over into Jewish synagogue practice. I love the way the Christian church in second century Rome took their cue from this prioritizing of Scripture reading: “And on the day called Sunday, all who live in cities or in the country gather together to one place, and the memoirs of the apostles or the writings of the prophets are read, as long as time permits…” (Justin Martyr, First Apology 67). There are many ways in which countless churches around the world honor this principle today—they gather to take in the story. However, sadly, many churches, even churches that vigorously defend the authority of the Bible, seldom actually read much of the Bible in worship. I wish churches in the latter camp would reconsider. I love the fact that the Sunday readings in the church I now serve consist of (often quite generous) portions of the Old Testament, the Psalms, the Epistles, and the Gospels … and that we stand for the Gospel.  

Interpreting the Word of God. As we are all acutely aware, everything in the Bible is subject to interpretation. It’s never really been as simple as, “The Bible said it, I believe it, that settles it.” Godly and competent and wise interpretation has been necessary from Day One. As Ezra reads, he is flanked by thirteen priests who along with thirteen Levites “helped the people to understand the law, while the people remained in their places. So they read from the book, from the law of God, with interpretation. They gave the sense, so that the people understood the reading” (Nehemiah 8:7b–8).  

Again, the early church learned from Jewish practice that preaching and teaching were necessary to explain the text and to help us figure out its meaning for our lives. Here’s Justin Martyr’s explanation of what kind of preaching would follow the reading of the memoirs of the apostles and the prophets in the second century Roman church: “…then, when the reader has ceased, the president verbally instructs, and exhorts to the imitation of these good things” (First Apology 67). The church didn’t gather to take their marching orders from a self-proclaimed policy wonk with a divinity degree, nor from a community organizer with a collar. They didn’t come from far and wide to find secrets to narcissistic self-actualization from a self-help sage with a stole. The ancient church knew, as Ezra and Nehemiah knew, that what people longed for was help to inhabit and orient their lives around the story being told, around the vision being painted, around the song being sung … in the Scripture being read. 

Take aways: read and interpret.  Our new drama troupe at the Cathedral Church of St Luke recently presented Christopher Marlowe’s The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus. Those familiar with Marlowe’s rendering of the classical Faust story know that in the end Marlowe’s Dr. Faustus’s belief is that God is all power and no love, all justice and no mercy. And so, while Faustus can imagine how “one drop” of Jesus’s blood, even “a half a drop” of his blood could save him, he just.can’t.bring.himself.to.ask! As one character chastises him: “… miserable man, That from thy soul exclud’st the grace of heaven.”  

Early in the play, Marlowe offers two factors that contribute to Faustus’s self-damnation.  

“Read, read the Scriptures…” Faustus finds enchantment in magic, but he can’t find the enchantment of the story that Scripture tells. A “Good Angel” exhorts him, to no avail, to put away the blasphemous books that enthrall him, and give the Bible a chance to re-engage his imagination. “Read, read the Scriptures … that [book of magic] is blasphemy!” But Faustus has decided he knows everything the Bible could possibly teach him, and is ready to move “beyond” it to magic and necromancy. But as we shall see, he’s only read the Scriptures partially, and badly at that.  

Interpret well, or things won’t go well. As he contemplates making a deal with the devil for his soul, Faustus recalls what he’s learned from the Bible. He remembers the first half of Romans 6:23, “The reward of sin is death….” The best he can conclude from this verselet is: “That is hard.” He can’t bring himself to recall the second half of the verse: “…but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”  

Faustus then recalls 1 John 1:8, “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and there’s no truth in us,” from which he infers that the Bible’s message is death and condemnation: “Che serà, serà. What will be shall be? Divinity, adieu!” Once again, Faustus reads only partially, and badly. He forgets that 1 John 1: 8 is the setup to 1 John 1:9, “If we confess our sins, he who is faithful and just will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”  

I pray that unlike “accursed Faustus, miserable man,” and instead like the joyfully redeemed children of the generation of Ezra and Nehemiah, like the second century Christians of Rome, and like countless believers around the world today, we read the Scripture and read it well. May we find in God’s Word not confused ideas about God, a disenchanted picture of reality, and condemnation of our souls, but rather a robust view of God, a re-enchanted world, and abundant mercy for our souls through Jesus Christ our Lord.  

Be blessed this day, 

Reggie Kidd+ 

Even the Dogs Get to Eat the Crumbs that Fall Off the Table - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Tuesday • 11/14/2023 •
Tuesday of the Twenty-fourth Week After Pentecost (Proper 27) 

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 78:1–39; Nehemiah 9:26–38; Revelation 18:9–20; Matthew 15:21–28 

This morning’s Canticles are: following the OT reading, Canticle 13 (“A Song of Praise,” BCP, p. 90); following the Epistle reading, Canticle 18 (“A Song to the Lamb,” Revelation 4:11; 5:9–10, 13, BCP, p. 93)  

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. This Tuesday in the Season After Pentecost our readings come from Proper 27 of Year 1 in the Daily Office Lectionary.  

Nehemiah: back in the land but still in Egypt. At Advent, we hear again John the Baptist quoting Isaiah in the wilderness: “In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God” (Isaiah 40:3). We take these words for granted, I think. Instead, we should be bowled over by them! When Isaiah forecasts God’s people’s exile for their sin, he characterizes that exile as a slavery just like that from Egypt under Moses, perhaps a millennium before his time. The Babylonian exile, says Isaiah, will require a second exodus. With his “Prepare the way of the Lord,” Isaiah offers hope for that second deliverance from slavery.  

John the Baptist’s premise is that his listeners are in the same position: in slavery in exile in a “Babylon” or an “Egypt,” and in need of rescue. Physically, they are in the Promised Land; and despite Roman occupation, there is no small level of prosperity and ease (at least for some) thanks to the expansive architectural ambitions and political finesse of the Herod dynasty. And yet, John the Baptist knows that his listeners understand they are still in an exile, still in need of a desert highway to home. His message strikes such a chord with people that they flock to him in the wilderness to receive his baptism of repentance in preparation for a new exodus.  

What is extraordinary about today’s reading in Nehemiah is the confession that the generation of Ezra and Nehemiah make: “Here we are, slaves to this day—slaves in the land that you gave to our ancestors to enjoy its fruit and its good gifts” (Nehemiah 9:36). Newly returned from the Babylonian exile Isaiah had predicted, newly “second exodus-ized” just as Isaiah had promised, they nonetheless confess themselves still to be in exile, in slavery, in need of the kind of exodus that four centuries later John the Baptist will announce.  

The response that Ezra and Nehemiah lead is worthy of note: there is deep confession, and a covenanting together of the people to renew their love for the God of forgiveness and redemption: “[W]e make a firm agreement in writing, and on that sealed document are inscribed the names of our officials, our Levites, and our priests” (Nehemiah 9:38).  

Image: Ilyas Basim Khuri Bazzi Rahib , Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons;  

This folio from Walters manuscript W.592 contains an illustration of Jesus and the Canaanite woman. Date: 1684.  
1931: bequeathed to Walters Art Museum by Henry Walters 

Matthew: a moment of pregnant silence. As we saw in the first half of Matthew 15, Jesus maintains that the things that make us “unclean” do not come from outside us, but from inside us. What defiles us is not external dirt, but internal sin. The implication is that once the inside of a person has been made clean, that is, once a sinner has been made right, they are clean indeed.  

Now, in the second half of Matthew 15, Jesus launches a mission into territories inhabited by “unclean” people, Gentile “dogs.” First, he brings his disciples west to the land of classical Phoenicia. Following this leg of the journey, he will take them east across the River Jordan into the Decapolis, the land of classical Syria.  

What’s he doing? Jesus is showing how God plans to work among Gentiles to make sinners into saints. Jesus is demonstrating how faith in the gospel will transform the “unclean” into “clean.” He’s preparing his disciples for the day when he will send them to make disciples of all nations, a mission that has already been foreshadowed in the coming of “wise men from the East” to worship him in infancy (Matthew 2 and 28).  

I think that the reading of today’s account of the Canaanite woman (Matthew 15:21–28), requires attention to two things: 1) the fact that Jesus has brought his disciples into pagan territory right after teaching that “uncleanness” lies within the human heart; and 2) a pregnant silence. Let’s keep reading. 

The only person we meet here on the coast of the Mediterranean is a woman of “the district of Tyre and Sidon” (Matthew 15:21). King Solomon had made a matrimonial alliance with the Sidonians, bringing idolatry into Israel (1Kings 11:1,33). King Ahab’s wife Jezebel, devotee of Baal and persecutor of the prophets, was a Sidonian princess (1 Kings 16:31). At the same time, the prophet Elijah had sojourned with a Sidonian widow and raised her son from the dead (1 Kings 17:9–24). In today’s reading, this pagan woman calls out to Jesus, “Lord, Son of David” (Matthew 15:22). Regardless of whatever influences are in her past, somehow she recognizes Jesus as Israel’s Messiah; and, not only that, but as the only hope that her daughter might be rid of a demon that has possessed her. This pagan woman asks Israel’s Messiah for mercy. Hers is a remarkable confession, a lightning bolt out of the blue.  

Jesus’s response is astounding. He says nothing: “But he did not answer her at all” (Matthew 15:23a). What’s he doing? He’s going to let his disciples make the next move. Do they understand? Do they “get it” that he has brought them over here to show them that any and every person can be made “clean” by faith in Messiah.  

What do they do? They say, “Send her away, for she keeps shouting after us” (Matthew 15:23b). To them, she’s an inconvenience and irritation. And so, Jesus, in full sarcastic mode, says (if I may paraphrase), “Well, gentlemen, you’re right. I have no idea what we’re doing over here. I only came for the lost tribes of Israel. Forget the fact that I brought you out of Israel over here into pagan territory” (Matthew 15:24). What’s going on in this conversation? She gets it, and presses in: “Lord, help me!” You can almost see the two of them make eye contact and smile. He says, “Surely you don’t expect me to take the children’s bread and give it to the dogs.” (In my head, I see, the “air quotes” he puts around “dogs,” a horrible term of disparagement that “clean” Jews used for “unclean” Gentiles.) She presses further in: “Well, look, even the dogs get to eat of the crumbs that fall off the table.” It’s as though she can see the smile in his eyes and hear the playfulness in his voice. He sees the smile in her eyes, and he lauds her faith. “Then Jesus said to her, ‘Woman, you have great faith! Your request is granted.’ And her daughter was healed at that moment” (Matthew 15:28). 

Takeaways. When we are trapped in prisons of sin, addiction, bad habits, and patterns of hurtful relationships, may we have the courage and honesty of the generation of Ezra and Nehemiah (as well as of those who came to John the Baptist). May we confess our imprisonment and ask for a new exodus.  

No matter your background, no matter your “Babylon” or “Egypt,” no matter what demon oppresses you or what temptation tempts you, I pray you know that Jesus the Son of David has the power to heal and to make you “clean” … and the mercy to will it so.  

Be blessed this day, 

Reggie Kidd+ 

Living Wisely - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Monday • 11/13/2023 •

Monday of the Twenty-fourth Week After Pentecost (Proper 27) 

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 80; Nehemiah 9:1–25; Revelation 18:1–8; Matthew 15:1–20 

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 Monday in the Season After Pentecost our readings finds us in Proper 27 of Year 1 in the Daily Office Lectionary.  

Matthew: “God commanded,” versus “But you said.” Commandments of God override traditions of men. Here is an important point in principle: we can’t improve on God’s requirements. Whenever we do, we do so either to dismiss or exaggerate. Either way, there’s diminishment. When we dismiss, we substitute our own desires. When we exaggerate, we hide God’s heart behind a wall of legalism. 

Jesus warns against drawing near with our lips while moving farther and farther away with our hearts. Jesus offers, as an example, dedicating to the Lord resources that are necessary for the care of elderly parents. There are lines you’d think pastors promoting stewardship would not cross; but I was once a part of a church where the senior pastor told people to give to the church even if it meant holding back their mortgage payment. If that’s not vain worship “teaching human precepts as doctrines…” (Matthew 15:9)!  

Image: "Prophet with a Scroll" by Lawrence OP is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0  

Then there’s the issue of blind spiritual guides. Jesus says God didn’t appoint them, and we should leave it to him to remove them: “Every plant that my heavenly Father has not planted will be uprooted. Let them alone; they are blind guides of the blind. And if one blind person guides another, both will fall into a pit” (Matthew 15:13–14). How prescient of Jesus to anticipate clueless church leaders who are blind to spiritual reality and who teach, for instance, that resurrection is incompatible with science, that only the gullible believe in miracles, and that activism substitutes for prayer. If we’re not responsible to call out and remove blind guides, we sure can spend every effort not to allow ourselves to be dragged into their pit of religious error, ethical confusion, and intellectual dissembling.  

Clean versus unclean. People today tend to think that the categories of “clean” and “unclean” don’t count anymore. That is unless you express an out-of-favor opinion about abortion, sexual ethics, or the Second Amendment. You find out quickly that some things are “clean” and others are “unclean.” Even people who have declared war on the sacred in the name of “desacralization” have boundary markers. Is nothing sacred, indeed? Well, some things clearly are.  

Jesus has hard words for those who place the boundary marker between “clean” and “unclean” in the wrong place: “For out of the heart come evil intentions, murder, adultery, fornication, theft, false witness, slander” (Matthew 15:19). We, it seems, are the problem.  

Nehemiah: Israel’s call to priesthood. The people of Israel had, in fact, been set aside to a holy end, that is, to be themselves a boundary marker between “clean” and “unclean.” “For I am the Lord your God; sanctify yourselves therefore, and be holy, for I am holy” (Leviticus 11:44). As God’s holy people, they were to be the incubator of God’s plan to bring redemption into the world, to reestablish holiness, to make clean again a world polluted by sin.  

That’s why Israelites were called to separate themselves from the nations during that incubation period—that is, during the era of the Old Covenant. That is why people in the era of Ezra and Nehemiah, as today’s passage says, “separated themselves from all foreigners, and stood and confessed their sins and the iniquities of their ancestors. 3They stood up in their place and read from the book of the law of the Lord their God for a fourth part of the day, and for another fourth they made confession and worshiped the Lord their God” (Nehemiah 9:2–3). As a kingdom of priests, the returning Israelite exiles acknowledged their failings and submitted themselves to God’s Word. In doing so, they reasserted God’s original call on them as his people.  

Revelation: the church versus Babylon. Revelation 17 (Saturday’s reading) had described the unholy alliance between the beast (the antichrist) and unredeemed humanity (“Babylon the great, mother of whores and of earth’s abominations”). The “the mystery of the woman” is that she is at once temptress with abominations and impurities, and also persecutor of the church. She is a symbol of world rulers who unite their power with the beast to “make war on the Lamb” (Revelation 17:4).  

Revelation 18 (today’s reading) promises her demise: “Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great! … [H]er plagues will come in a single day—pestilence and mourning and famine—and she will be burned with fire; for mighty is the Lord God who judges her” (Revelation 18:2b,8).  

At the same time, God’s people, like everybody else, are susceptible to her charms (we’ve just read Jesus teaching that the problem is inside us, not outside us). For this reason, John records: “Then I heard another voice from heaven saying, ‘Come out of her, my people, so that you do not take part in her sins, and so that you do not share in her plagues’” (Revelation 18:4). Until the City of God descends from above, we will necessarily live in the City of Man. But we do not need to allow, indeed we dare not allow, the City of Man to live in us.  

I pray God’s grace for each of us to do the sober self-reflection (which only grace can truly enable) for what is “unclean” within and needs to be brought to the Lord for cleansing. I pray God’s grace for each of us to give ourselves to reading, marking, digesting, and obeying God’s Word. I pray God’s grace for each of us to live wisely as citizens of the “city above” during our sojourn “here below.”  

Be blessed this day,  

Reggie Kidd+ 

Joy in Victory - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Friday • 11/10/2023 •
Friday of the Twenty-third Week After Pentecost (Proper 26) 

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 69; Ezra 7:27-28, 8:21-36; Revelation 15:1–8; Matthew 14:13–21 

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 26 of Year 1 of the Daily Office Lectionary.  

Heavyweight boxing champion Sonny Liston is supposed to have said, “A boxing match is like a cowboy movie. There’s got to be ‘good guys’ and there’s got to be ‘bad guys.’ And that’s what people pay for—to see the ‘bad guys’ get beat.”  

There’s something primordial and true here. Even if movies and sporting events only give us constructs of “good” and “bad,” they can do so because they are answering to something deep within us. Part of what it is to bear the imago dei is to long for good to prevail and evil to be repulsed.  

Image: Medieval, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons 

Revelation: joy in victory… That said, it can be challenging to get our heads around the dual fact that redemption of the earth has a bright side and a dark side. Heaven cannot hold back its joyful song celebrating the combining and the consummating of Old Covenant promise (“the song of Moses”) and of New Covenant promise (“the song of the Lamb”).  

“And I saw what appeared to be a sea of glass mixed with fire, and those who had conquered the beast and its image and the number of its name, standing beside the sea of glass with harps of God in their hands. 3 And they sing the song of Moses, the servant of God, and the song of the Lamb: 

Great and amazing are your deeds, 
    Lord God the Almighty! 
Just and true are your ways, 
    King of the nations!  
4 Lord, who will not fear 
    and glorify your name? 
For you alone are holy. 
    All nations will come 
    and worship before you, 
for your judgments have been revealed” (Revelation 15:2–4). 

…and joy in wrath. The concluding note of the exuberantly joyful song of Moses and of the Lamb is that “your judgments have been revealed.” God is setting right what had become twisted and broken. The obverse side of redemption is the consummation and completion of God’s wrath against the wickedness that has infected his creation: “Then I saw another portent in heaven, great and amazing: seven angels with seven plagues, which are the last, for with them the wrath of God is ended … Then one of the four living creatures gave the seven angels seven golden bowls full of the wrath of God, who lives forever and ever; 8 and the temple was filled with smoke from the glory of God and from his power, and no one could enter the temple until the seven plagues of the seven angels were ended” (Revelation 15:7–8).  

God is not an “it.” We dare not emotionally neuter him or robotize him. Nor is he a mere Big Buddy in the sky, a patsy who winks at evil. The God of the Bible loathes the dissolution and corruption that have taken hold in his creation. Therefore, part of what it is to be redeemed is to share God’s own repugnance at all that is evil and unjust and godless—beginning, of course, with that which is evil and unjust and ungodly within ourselves. But then, all that has corrupted everything around us in the political realm, in economics, in church life, in international relations, in misuse of communications technology—in whatever destroys human lives or the creation over which he made us stewards. We dare not be emotionally neutral about any of that, because our God is not! 

Part of what it is to share the heart of Jesus is to “hunger and thirst for righteousness” (Matthew 5:6). Part of doing so is hungering and thirsting for the day when God’s wrath does away with everything that has defiled his creation. In addition, part of doing so is putting ourselves on the side of all that is right in the here and now, for, as Micah said,  

“He has told you, O mortal, what is good; 
    and what does the Lord require of you 
but to do justice, and to love kindness, 
    and to walk humbly with your God?” (Micah 6:8).  

Be blessed this day,  

Reggie Kidd+ 

Choose Wisely - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Thursday • 11/9/2023 •
Thursday of the Twenty-third Week After Pentecost (Proper 26) 

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 71; Ezra 7:1–26; Revelation 14:1–13; Matthew 14:1–12 

This morning’s Canticles are: following the OT reading, Canticle 8 (“The Song of Moses,” Exodus 15, BCP, p. 85); following the Epistle reading, Canticle 19 (“The Song of the Redeemed,” Revelation 15:3–4, BCP, p. 94) 

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. On this Thursday in the Season After Pentecost our readings come from Proper 26 of Year 1 in the Daily Office Lectionary.  

Unholy trinity. In Revelation 13 (delicately skipped over by the Daily Lectionary), an “unholy trinity” has risen up against God, the Lamb, and his people. Empowered by the dragon Satan, a beast comes up out of the sea (the sea is often a symbol of chaos in the Bible). The beast is a parody of Christ: he appears to have been killed but was healed. He leads the world in worship of the dragon, and then himself receives worship along with the dragon. This beast’s words (in perfect mockery of the true Christ—see Matthew 11:25–30), are proud and blasphemous (Revelation 13:5). The beast that emerges from the sea appears to be the figure John refers to in his epistles as “Antichrist” (1 John 2:18,22, 4:3)

While most interpreters focus on what this horrible imagery means for the future of the church and the world, it is important to notice, I think, that the season of the rule of this first beast is forty-two months (the symbolic length of time for the persecuted church). As John says in his epistles, “antichrist” and many embodiments of “antichrist” are already among us (1 John 4:3; 2 John 7).  

Image: https://www.flickr.com/photos/hartsell/2766008839/ Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic License. 

Meanwhile, a second beast emerges that has the power to give life to the image of the first beast, and to work miracles—deluding, deceiving miracles. There arises full throttled rebellion by the anti-trinity of dragon, first beast, and second beast. This rebellion will at some future date launch a concentrated attack, but it’s a rebellion with which the church must contend throughout this age of “already and not yet.”  

In view of the campaign of the dragon and the two beasts, what’s called for from us, says Revelation 13:10, is endurance and faith. Today’s reading in Revelation 14 underscores, and indeed, heightens this point.  

A church united in suffering and praise. In Revelation 14, John reprises the joint picture he had painted in Revelation 7 of a church comprised of the full number of faithful Israelites and of the myriad from all the nations to whom the eternal gospel is proclaimed. Even while soberly recounting the tribulations they undergo, John finds them joining the song of victory that resounds in heaven.  

The great choice in life is whether or not to receive the name of the Lamb and his Father on one’s forehead: “Then I looked, and there was the Lamb, standing on Mount Zion! And with him were one hundred forty-four thousand who had his name and his Father’s name written on their foreheads” (Revelation 14:1).  

It is not inconsequential, I think, that in the ancient church, anointing oil would be applied to the forehead at baptism, when a person is sealed in Christ, declared “child of God,” and given their “new name.” As first fruits of God’s new creation, the baptized bear God’s name and announce his “eternal gospel” to the world.  

Choose wisely. By contrast, those who do not receive that sacrament will find themselves receiving an ugly parody of chrismation: “Those who worship the beast and its image, and receive a mark on their foreheads or on their hands…” (Revelation 14:9b). In addition, they will find that because they refused Jesus’s offer of the Bread from Heaven and the Cup of Salvation, “they will also drink the wine of God’s wrath, poured unmixed into the cup of his anger…” (Revelation 14:10a).  

The same choice lies before all of us as lay before characters in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade: “Choose wisely.” A cup of death, or a cup of life.  

John is shown that Babylon (a symbol of the human quest to overthrow God) will fall, if not immediately, then nonetheless inevitably. In the meantime, believers of every time and place (from the 7 churches of Revelation to the churches of our own day, and beyond) are given a threefold challenge:  

Endure. Obey. Believe. “Here is a call for the endurance of the saints, those who keep the commandments of God and hold fast to the faith of Jesus” (Revelation 14:12). Our challenge is, first, to endure with grace and courage all that comes our way, second, to obey God’s Word rather than our own predilections, and, third, to believe in the finished work of Jesus on the cross and his ongoing work in our lives and in our world.  

And we are given a singular promise: our deaths are neither wasted nor to be lamented: “And I heard a voice from heaven saying, ‘Write this: Blessed are the dead who from now on die in the Lord.’ ‘Yes,’ says the Spirit, ‘they will rest from their labors, for their deeds follow them’” (Revelation 14:13).  

Be blessed this day,  

Reggie Kidd+ 

A Dramatic Redemption - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Wednesday • 11/8/2023 •
Wednesday of the Twenty-third Week After Pentecost (Proper 26) 

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 72; Nehemiah 13:4–22; Revelation 12:1-12; Matthew 13:53–58 

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. This Wednesday in the Season After Pentecost our readings come from Proper 26 of Year 1 in the Daily Office Lectionary.  

Nehemiah: a balanced life. Ezra and Nehemiah belong to a beautiful season in redemptive history. What is compelling and attractive is the comprehensiveness of their vision of life for bearers of the image of God. It’s a vision of basking in God’s Word: Ezra reads the Law (Nehemiah 8:1–8). It’s a vision of gathering for worship: the people resume the sacred festivals (Nehemiah 8:9–18). And it’s a vision of lives being offered as living sacrifices, of people doing justice, loving mercy, and walking humbly before God. Ezra and Nehemiah reestablish the moral center of people’s lives.  

The last of these concerns is the theme of today’s reading in Nehemiah. After having been away from Persia for twelve years, Nehemiah had been required to return to Artaxerxes’s service. “After some time,” he explains, “I asked leave of the king and returned to Jerusalem” (Nehemiah 13:6b–7a). Upon his return, he finds that in his absence things have not gone well. Instead of feeding the sheep, spiritual shepherds are fleecing the sheep. The temple’s stewards have converted Yahweh’s temple into a marketplace for selling religious “benefits” for personal profit. People have stopped supporting the Levites, and so he asks, “Why is the house of God forsaken?” (Nehemiah 13:11). Meanwhile, merchants are making a mockery of sacred time. The malls are open on the sabbath (Nehemiah 13:15–19). 

Nehemiah responds by booting those who had misappropriated temple grounds, cleanses the temple of stuff that doesn’t belong there (“I threw all the household furniture of Tobiah out of the room” — Nehemiah 13:8), returns sacred objects to their rightful place, reinstitutes tithes, brings the Levites back onto the temple staff, shuts down the sabbath markets, and informs the merchants not to come on the sabbath: “If you do so again, I will lay hands on you” (Nehemiah 13:21).  

Nehemiah provides a glimpse ahead of time into the passion that drove Jesus to take a stand against the unjust and irreligious use of the temple in his own day (Matthew 21:10–17; Mark 11:15–17; Luke 19:45–46; John 2:13–17). It’s not enough to believe the right things and go through the motions of worship. There’s a non-negotiable life that aligns with those beliefs and with that worship. Without this life, the beliefs and the worship are worthless.  

In combination, though, orthopistia (right belief), orthodoxia (right worship), and orthopraxis (right behavior) embody God’s life powerfully, and make the most compelling statement to the world about who he is. One of the great gifts of the Ezra-Nehemiah chapter of the biblical story is to communicate this great truth to us.  

Image: Zion72, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Revelation: a dramatic redemption. Today’s reading in Revelation portrays our redemption in a dramatic and unique way. It’s a breathtaking perspective: A great sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet and a crown of twelve stars on her head. This regal woman is about to give birth to “a son, a male child, who is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron” (Revelation 12:1,2,5). The Book of Revelation demands nuance and humility of interpretation. But I’m certain that this woman is Mary from God’s perspective: an embodiment of all that Israel was called to be. With her twelve-starred crown and birth pangs, she is both kingdom of priests and bride of God, bearing God’s life into the world.  

A dragon, i.e., Satan, would kill the child at birth (as well he attempted to do through Herod the Great — Matthew 2). And even Satan’s apparent success on the Cross is a failure, “because it was impossible for him to be held in [death’s] power” (Acts 2:24). Victorious over death, the “Child” is taken up to heaven at his ascension (Acts 1:1–11).  

Now, the woman who has represented Mary-as-Israel becomes the Church, the future Bride of Christ (see Revelation 19). For now, she is whisked into “the wilderness, where she has a place prepared by God, so that there she can be nourished for one thousand two hundred sixty days”—i.e., the same three and a half years by which Revelation describes the church-age in terms of a “short” season of tribulation.  

In the wilderness of her sojourn, the woman—i.e., the Church—will need nourishment and protection because a battle has broken out in heaven (Revelation 12:7). Michael the archangel defeats the dragon Satan, who is cast out of heaven and hurled to earth where he will do what damage he can to the creation and the creatures whom God loves—especially to God’s beloved Bride-to-be, the Church (Revelation 12:8–9).  

Even as she experiences the travails of her persecution (as recorded in the rest of the verses in Revelation 12, which the daily lectionary, alas, leaves out!), heaven’s song rings through:  

“Now have come the salvation and the power 
    and the kingdom of our God 
    and the authority of his Messiah,  
for the accuser of our comrades has been thrown down, 
    who accuses them day and night before our God. 
11 But they have conquered him by the blood of the Lamb 
    and by the word of their testimony, 
for they did not cling to life even in the face of death. 
12 Rejoice then, you heavens 
    and those who dwell in them! 
But woe to the earth and the sea, 
    for the devil has come down to you 
with great wrath, 
    because he knows that his time is short!” (Revelation 12:10–12).  

I pray we know what it is to believe accurately, to worship rightly, to live obediently, and to rejoice in the wonder of God’s defeat of evil even amid our daily struggle against it.  

Be blessed this day, 

Reggie Kidd+ 

The Church Protected and Prevailing - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Tuesday • 11/7/2023 •
Tuesday of the Twenty-third Week After Pentecost (Proper 26) 

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 61; Psalm 62; Nehemiah 12:27–31a,42b–47; Revelation 11:1–19; Matthew 13:44–52 

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. This Tuesday in the Season After Pentecost our readings come from Proper 26 of Year 1 in the Daily Office Lectionary.  

Revelation 11: the church protected and prevailing 

Looking back and looking ahead. In Revelation 10, John is instructed to eat a little scroll. It is sweet and bitter, because its message is both good news and bad news, both blessing and curse. Accordingly, from Revelation 12 to the end of the book, Revelation will forecast the destiny of two symbolic women: the “bride of Christ” for whom a wedding banquet is being prepared in a new heaven and new earth (Revelation 19–22), and “the great whore [of Babylon] who is seated on many waters, with whom the kings of the earth have committed fornication, and with the wine of whose fornication the inhabitants of the earth have become drunk” (Revelation 17:1b–2). Two women, representing humanities with two destinies. The book’s message to us is: choose carefully which future is yours.  

Image: "Heaven" by Boston Public Library is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 

Measuring time. Here in Revelation 11, in preparation for the unfolding of the drama contrasting the destinies of the bride of Christ and the whore of Babylon, John is given perspective on God’s provision and protection during “three-and-a-half years” of intense tribulation (Revelation 11:3).  

In their juxtaposition in the book of Revelation, two important numbers represent the duration of the church’s existence between Christ’s two comings: three-and-a-half years, and a thousand years. These numbers are, I believe (and it is a matter of interpretation), symbolic rather than literal. The church age is at one and the same time a short period in which Christians testify despite strong resistance (Revelation 11:3; 12:6,14; 13:5), and also a long period in which they share in Christ’s reign as a kingdom of priests (Revelation 20:2).  

Measuring the temple. Some interpreters believe the measuring of the temple in Revelation 11 has in view either the physical temple that no longer stands in Jerusalem or a temple that will one day be rebuilt there. I do not believe either is in view. I believe God is assuring John and readers like you and me that God protects and preserves the faithful who dwell in the new temple that has been under construction since Christ rose from the dead (John 2:19–20; 1 Corinthians 3:9; 6:19; Ephesians 2:19–22; Hebrews 3:6; 1 Peter 2:4–5). Right now, God dwells among his people, and despite the storm of tribulation through which they live, he neither abandons them nor forsakes them. Thus, Revelation 11:4–10 promises “oil” to keep the “lamps” of the temple lit, and power and authority to the words of the witnesses.  

What lies ahead: martyrdom and vindication. The New Testament consistently pictures a day that lies ahead of us when, by God’s permission, there will be something that New Testament theologian Herman Ridderbos calls “an explosion of evil.” In his epistles, John refers to “the Antichrist” and “the spirit of Antichrist” (1 John 2:18,22; 4:3; 2 John 7). In Revelation, John describes “the war against the Lamb and his people,” empowered by the unleashed dragon Satan (Revelation 12:9; 20:7–9a), effected through the great beast that emerges from the sea (Revelation 13), and inflaming all those in thrall to the whore of Babylon.  

In Revelation 11, John gets a preview of how challenging those days will be for God’s people: “When they have finished their testimony, the beast that comes up from the bottomless pit will make war on them and conquer them and kill them” (Revelation 11:7). With the unleashing of Satan, the rise of the beast, and the attack of the armies of the whore of Babylon, an intense season of martyrdom lies ahead. But that season of intense suffering will be limited to a symbolic “three and a half days,” and will be followed by Christ’s return and our resurrection. Vindication will come with the sounding of the seventh trumpet, the opening of God’s temple in heaven, a raining down of a storm of judgment against all lawlessness (Revelation 11:15–19), the return of Christ in glory (Revelation 19:11–21), and the establishment of God’s final reign (especially Revelation 20:9b–22:21). On that day, the church below will join the song of the church above: “The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Messiah, and he will reign forever and ever” (Revelation 11:15).  

Meanwhile, while John is told not to write down everything he sees (Revelation 10:4), he is told to write this down for us: “The one who overcomes I will make a pillar in the temple of my God … The one who overcomes I will grant to sit with me on my throne … The one who overcomes will inherit these things, and I will be their God and they will be my son” (Revelation 3:12,21; 21:7, my translation).  

Be blessed this day,  

Reggie Kidd+ 

Wheat and Tares - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Monday • 11/6/2023 •
Monday of the Twenty-third Week After Pentecost (Proper 26) 

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 56; Psalm 57; Nehemiah 6:1–19; Revelation 10:1–11; Matthew 13:36–43 

This morning’s Canticles are: following the OT reading, Canticle 9 (“The First Song of Isaiah,” Isaiah 12:2–6, BCP, p. 86); following the Epistle reading, Canticle 19 (“The Song of the Redeemed,” Revelation 15:3–4, BCP, p. 94) 

Welcome to Daily Office Devotions, where every Monday through Friday we explore that day’s Scripture readings, as given in the Book of Common Prayer. I’m Reggie Kidd. Thanks for joining me. This Monday in the Season After Pentecost our readings finds us in Proper 26 of Year 1 in the Daily Office Lectionary.  

Wheat and Tares 

Anger is the prevailing mood of our day—cleansing, purging, “righteous” anger. One might have thought that the troubles of today’s world would bring us all together in a united campaign against a common enemy. Instead, it’s pushed us further into our separate corners, pitting “my rights” folks against “our common good” folks. In a range of matters political, racial, and economic, rage runs deep. Terms like “block,” “unfriend,” “cancel” have taken on new meaning. They are weapons of moral indignation, as people cleanse their worlds of those they view as unjust, ill-informed, and unholy.  

* Reggie M. Kidd, “Matthew,” in Michael J. Krueger (ed.), A Biblical-Theological Introduction to the New Testament (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2016), 52–53. 

With his parable of “The Wheat and the Tares” (told in last Friday’s gospel reading and explained in today’s), Jesus urges us to hit the pause button. In brief, as I put it in another setting, “The master of the field is perfectly willing to allow weeds to get as much care as the wheat until the appointed time for making all things right. When the time for final judgment comes, the angels, not the workers, will do the final sorting.”* 

In God’s providence, “the children of promise” and “the children of the flesh,” or, to use another biblical image, “the sons of light” and “the sons of darkness,” live side by side until Christ returns to bring final judgment. It’s been that way since God protected Cain following Abel’s death (Genesis 4:1–16). God bestowed culture-building gifts to the line of Cain, while giving the gift of worship to children of the line of Seth (Genesis 4:17–21,25–26). As strange as it may seem to us, Cain’s descendants and Seth’s descendants live in interdependence to one another. Christ, and Christ alone, will separate “wheat” from “tares” and “sheep” from “goats” (Matthew 13 and 25), and that, at a time not chosen by him, but appointed by his Father (Mark 13:32; Matthew 24:36).  

As I was pondering this puzzling parable, I stumbled upon reflections written by Augustine, the North African 5th century bishop. He too lived in a time when people’s fuses were short. The redemptive hopes for a Christianized Roman Empire were falling short: pagans were asking why barbarians were still invading 100 years after Constantine’s conversion, and why riotous living had not been put in check. Here, Augustine writes the first Christian philosophy of history. In it, he calls for patience. The human story, he argues, is one of the simultaneous emergence of, and the divergence between, the “City of God” and the “City of Man.” Each “city” becomes more itself.  

In the previous parable about the Sower and the Seed, Augustine reminds his readers, Jesus warns us not to be “stony ground,” “shallow ground,” or “thorny places” (Matthew 13:1–9,18–23). Rather, we should, says Augustine, “plough the hard ground, cast the stones out of the field, pluck up the thorns out of it.” Guard, in other words, against a hard heart that will reject God’s Word. Avoid a shallowness of soul where God’s love will find no root. Remove things like lust and the cares of this world that would choke the life out of us. Instead, our lives should be “good ground,” where God’s Word gets planted deep, and produces much fruit.  

In this next parable about Wheat and Tares, Jesus changes the image (Matthew 13:24–30,36–43). We now are what comes up out of the ground. We are either wheat that nourishes, or tares (likely, darnel) that poison. The scary thing is that the wheat and the darnel plant look alike. Both will sit side by side in church, says Augustine, and be indistinguishable from the outside. Jesus warns us, of course, not to let ourselves be tares: life-giving in appearance, but death-dealing in actuality. Comments Augustine:  

I am addressing the tares; but the sheep themselves are the tares. O evil Christians, O you, who in filling only press the Church by your evil lives; amend yourselves before the harvest come … He is requiring repentance of you … and may it be so that they who today are tares, may tomorrow be wheat. 

That’s something we might very well expect Jesus to say. What’s a bit surprising is what he says to the good wheat: Don’t think it’s your job to get rid of the tares. You’ll destroy yourselves if you do. As Augustine puts it:   

Why are you so hasty, [Jesus] says, you servants full of zeal? You see evil Christians among the good; and you wish to root up the evil ones; be quiet, it is not the time of harvest. That time will come, may it only find you wheat! … O you Christians, whose lives are good, you sigh and groan as being few among many, few among very many. The winter will pass away, the summer will come; lo! The harvest will soon be here. …  

Let the good tolerate the bad; let the bad change themselves, and imitate the good. Let us all, if it may be so, attain to God. 

Almost as if to summarize this parable, and certainly to address people who live in a day like Augustine’s and ours, James the brother of Jesus puts it this way: “the wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God” (James 1:20 KJV).   

Be blessed this day,  

Reggie Kidd+ 

The Welfare of the City - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Friday • 11/3/2023 •
Friday of the Twenty-second Week After Pentecost (Proper 25) 

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 40; Psalm 54; Nehemiah 2:1–20; Revelation 6:12–7:4; Matthew 13:24–30 

And inserting the normal readings for Monday (which happens to be All Saints Day): Psalm 56; Psalm 57; Nehemiah 6:1–19; Revelation 10:1–11; Matthew 13:36–43 

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 25 of Year 1 of the Daily Office Lectionary.  

Nehemiah represents a second wave of efforts in the post-exilic restoration of Judah and Jerusalem. Ezra before him had concentrated on the temple. Nehemiah will be known for rebuilding the city wall. In the year 445 B.C., some 93 years after Persia’s King Cyrus had decreed the return of Jews to Jerusalem, Nehemiah is still in Persia, ministering in the court of Persia’s Artaxerxes II. He does so in the spirit of Jeremiah’s earlier exhortation in advance of exile: “[S]eek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare” (Jeremiah 29:7).  

Two notes about what is going on in Nehemiah’s heart are intriguing.  

Nehemiah’s “sadness of the heart.” A friend once told me that if I haven’t learned the rules of poker (which I never have), I would be wise never to do so. “You’re just too easy to read. In poker, you’d lose your shirt.” Maybe that’s why I love Nehemiah. He’s “seeking the welfare of the city” of his exile, faithfully and honorably serving as wine-bearer for the Persian king, in fact. But his affections lie in the country his people had been cast out of a century and a half earlier. Artaxerxes reads him like a book: “Why is your face sad, since you are not sick? This can only be sadness of the heart” (Nehemiah 2:2).  

Image: The Eran Laor Cartographic Collection, National Library of Israel, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons 

Nehemiah answers honestly, and perhaps courageously: “Why should my face not be sad, when the city, the place of my ancestors’ graves, lies waste, and its gates have been destroyed by fire?” (Nehemiah 2:3). The exchange leads to Artaxerxes sending Nehemiah to Jerusalem, not only with his blessing, but with his official endorsement and support for Nehemiah’s efforts “to seek the welfare of the people of Israel” (Nehemiah 2:10).  

Here’s the payoff for a dual commitment to love God and love neighbor. Nehemiah’s heart had been shaped by affection for the Lord, after the example of people like Daniel, who, we are told, prayed towards Jerusalem three times a day (Daniel 6:10). And, Nehemiah’s heart had been shaped by the fact that, in obedience to the God of the whole earth, he had been “seeking the welfare of the city” of his exile, where God’s providence had landed him.  

Nehemiah’s is a case in which something good happens when what’s in the heart “leaks” out. Sometimes it’s not a bad thing when somebody can read you like a book. Sometimes emotional transparency is redemptive.  

Nehemiah’s secret plans of the heart. At the same time, there’s much to admire in Nehemiah’s caginess in holding close to the vest his plans for rebuilding Jerusalem until he has studied closely the situation on the ground. Unlike me, Nehemiah can, it turns out, hold a poker face!  

Three days after his arrival in Jerusalem, he says, “… I got up during the night, I and a few men with me; I told no one what my God had put into my heart to do for Jerusalem. The only animal I took was the animal I rode” (Nehemiah 2:12). Secretly, he circuits the city by night to assess the extent of the damage to the city wall, how vulnerable the city is, and how great the task of rebuilding will be. Then, and only then, he tells the Jewish leaders and people his plans: “‘You see the trouble we are in, how Jerusalem lies in ruins with its gates burned. Come, let us rebuild the wall of Jerusalem, so that we may no longer suffer disgrace.’ I told them that the hand of my God had been gracious upon me, and also the words that the king had spoken to me. Then they said, ‘Let us start building!’ So they committed themselves to the common good” (Nehemiah 2:17–18).  

It’s as though Nehemiah had heard ahead of time Jesus’s exhortation to count your resources before you commit yourself to battle (Luke 14:31). With the confidence of God’s call, the Persian king’s imprimatur, and the people’s commitment to the work, he is ready to stand up to resistance from the surrounding non-Jewish overlords who have a vested interest in keeping Jerusalem in rubble. To them, he is now ready to assert: “The God of heaven is the one who will give us success, and we his servants are going to start building; but you have no share or claim or historic right in Jerusalem” (Nehemiah 2:19).  

May God grant us hearts like Nehemiah’s, at once pliable and sagacious. 

Be blessed this day, 

Reggie Kidd+ 

Nehemiah's night tour along the walls of Jerusalem as described in the book of Nehemiah chapter two. Edited by Alon Adir, usually following the hypotheses presented in the World of the Bible encyclopedia - Vol. Daniel, Ezra and Nehemiah. The site scores and the tour route were illustrated on a topographic map of Jerusalem donated by the Eran Collection

A Book of Hope - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Thursday • 11/2/2023 •
Thursday of the Twenty-second Week After Pentecost (Proper 25) 

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 50; Nehemiah 1:1–11; Revelation 5:11–6:11; Matthew 13:18–23 

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. On this Thursday in the Season After Pentecost our readings come from Proper 25 of Year 1 in the Daily Office Lectionary.  

“Well, that’s a matter of interpretation!” This phrase has shut down so many discussions about the Bible.  In truth, the Bible does have to be interpreted. It’s important to acknowledge that fact, and then honestly to look for the best interpretation. That quest involves paying close attention to the text and listening to others who have interpreted the text as well (not to mention praying and listening to the Lord!).  

When it comes to the Book of Revelation, I have found myself persuaded by those who see Revelation taking us up to final judgment seven different times, each time building in dramatic intensity. Final judgment, it seems to these interpreters and to me, takes place at 6:12–17; 7:9–17 (after the seven seals), at 11:15,18 (after the seven trumpets), at 14:14,15,18 (after the woman versus the dragon), at 16:17,20 (after the bowls, at 19:11–21 (after Babylon’s fall), and at 20:9b–15 (after Satan’s last campaign).  

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

On several occasions, those cycles begin with a look back on Jesus’s earthly ministry and his inaugural victory over sin and Satan and death. That’s how I understand, for instance, Revelation 12’s description of the child born to the woman and taken up to heaven. It’s also how I understand Revelation 20’s description of Satan being bound (which is what had enabled Jesus to “cast out Satan” in his exorcisms, according to Matthew 12:26–29; Mark 3:23–27. In the parallel passage, Luke says Jesus “overcomes”).  

Though it’s difficult to be dogmatic about it, I think that today’s passage introducing the seven seals also begins with a look back on the earthly ministry of Christ. The “first horseman” has a bow and a crown and comes “conquering and to conquer.” The word is nikein, and is more generally translated “to overcome,” and its connotations in John’s writings are positive more often than not.1 Jesus says, “I have overcome the world” (John 16:33), and his believers are urged to “overcome” (Revelation 2:7,11,17,26; 3:5,12,21; 15:2; 21:7). The Lion of Judah who was slain as a lamb has “overcome” (Revelation 5:5). His initial and inaugural victory over sin and death will culminate in a final “overcoming” of all of God’s and his people’s enemies (Revelation 17:14).  

The horsemen that come with the second, third, and fourth seals depict Satanic pushback—war, famine, and death. During the span of time between Christ’s first coming and his second coming, we will be beset by much misery. Thus, with the fifth seal, we find ourselves crying out “How long?” (Revelation 6:10). “How long” will war, famine, and death impact our lives? “How long” until we experience relief? 

Then there is this amazing response: “…a little longer, until the full number would be complete” (Revelation 6:11). In the immediate context, martyrs are being told that the full number of martyrs must be complete—which doesn’t sound like great news. However, the panorama opens out to show what “the full number” means at a deeper level. For, following the sixth seal just before final judgment (Friday’s reading of the end of Revelation 6 and the beginning of Revelation 7), we view what the true “full number” that the “little longer” of our wait will have produced: a completed Israel (the symbolic 144,000 Jews of Revelation 7:4–8) and an innumerable host of Gentiles (Revelation 7:9–17). It’s what Paul calls “the fullness of Jews” and “the fullness of Gentiles” (Romans 11:12,25).  

The point of the whole book of Revelation is nicely summed up in its first seven chapters. We begin with a vision of the resplendent Christ who loves us and has set us free from our sins by his blood (Revelation 1). We see in Revelation 2 and 3 that he cares intimately for his churches that struggle with persecution from without, and error and faithlessness within. Revelation 4 reminds us that the Creator has not given up on his creation, and Revelation 5 assures us that all of history unfolds in the hands of the victorious Lion/Lamb.  

Here in Revelation 6–7’s first cycle of judgment we are assured that our living between the time of Christ’s initial “overcoming” in his earthly ministry, his death, and resurrection for us—between that time and his return in final victory—we will live with a dual reality. Believers, no less than unbelievers, will live with war, famine, and death.  However, during this symbolically “a little longer,” God will be sovereignly at work through the witness of his martyrs and faithful believers to bring to himself the Israel of his election and the nations who stream in to receive the promises.  

Revelation is a powerful book of hope, a book that urges us to look with compassion on our neighbors who know only the gloom of war, famine, and death. Revelation calls us to invite them to join us in looking up to the Creator, to reach out to the Redeemer, and to allow themselves to be added to the great host of those who will one day greet with joy Christ’s coming in final victory.  

Be blessed this day,  

Reggie Kidd+ 

The Lion of Judah - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Wednesday • 11/1/2023 •
Wednesday of the Twenty-second Week After Pentecost (Proper 25) 

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 119:49-72; Ezra 6:1-22; Revelation 5:1-10; Matthew 13:10-17 

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. This Wednesday in the Season After Pentecost our readings come from Proper 25 of Year 1 in the Daily Office Lectionary.  

Three intriguing moments in the Bible’s storyline.  

Ezra: Persian aid. In today’s reading, a succession of Persian rulers realize that they have a vested interest in what happens in Jerusalem’s temple. Darius not only confirms Cyrus’s original decree that God’s house in Jerusalem be built. He underwrites the entire project: “…so that they may offer pleasing sacrifices to the God of heaven, and pray for the life of the king and his children” (Ezra 6:10). It’s as though these strangers to the promises of God (see Ephesians 2:12) have overheard whisperings from above. We know, because we know the larger story, that Yahweh had called Israel “to be my treasured possession out of all the peoples. Indeed, the whole earth is mine, but you shall be for me a priestly kingdom and a holy nation” (Exodus 19:5b–6a). At some level, the Persian kings have taken hold of this deep mystery. 

The entire nation of Israel is a priesthood. Priests represent not just themselves. They dare to enter God’s presence, and they do so on behalf of others. Israel’s ministry before the Lord is for the sake of the whole world. Israel’s mission is indeed to offer sacrifices—and ultimately, it turns out, a singular sacrifice—for the whole world, for the life of kings and children not just in Persia in the 5th century BC, but for kings and paupers, elderly and children, of every tribe and tongue, of every time and place.  

Revelation 5: The Lion and the Lamb. And in this precise mystery lies the key to the entire book of Revelation—a mystery that Revelation 5 unlocks. The scroll that tells the destiny of all humanity must be opened. Who is worthy to tell the story of all of us? Judah’s conquering Lion, of course, per the promise made to King David and his line, except with an ironic twist. The Lion conquers by giving himself up as a sacrificial victim: “Then I saw between the throne and the four living creatures and among the elders a Lamb standing as if it had been slaughtered” (Revelation 5:6). 

Image:  Diego Delso, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons 

No one in the modern world has told this tale as memorably as C. S. Lewis in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. The White Witch has imprisoned the fantasy realm of Narnia under a spell of a perpetual winter. She appeals to the justice of a deep magic that demands the death of Edmund, a traitorous child visiting from our world. Aslan, the great Lion of Narnia, negotiates the release of Edmund, at the price of his own slaughter on the altar-like Stone Table. By a deeper and older magic, Aslan’s death destroys the Stone Table, and more. Aslan returns to life, the witch’s magic begins to crumble, and winter starts working backwards.  

The redeemer of our world is Judah’s Lion slain as a Sacrificial Lamb, risen as Christus Victor—Victor over sin, over death, over hell, over everything that could possibly separate us from God. He is worthy to open the scroll. He is worthy to tell the world its true story. He is worthy to reveal to each of us our destiny as beloved children of the great King. What’s more, he makes us—we who come “from every tribe and language and people and nation”—what he has called his people to be, “a kingdom and priests serving our God, and …reign[ing] on earth” (Revelation 5:9,10). Praise be! 

Matthew: Parables and the demand to choose. A note of sadness courses through Jesus’s earthly ministry, and not just sadness because of the necessity of the death he must die in sinners’ place. A deeper sadness, it seems. A grief over the dullness of his contemporaries who fail to grasp who he is as fulfillment of the divine drama that is being played out before them. He has come to end the ongoing exile of Israel (and of the whole world!) in the Babylon of sin and death and hell. The magi from the same region as Ezra’s Persian kings foresaw it at the beginning of Matthew’s narrative (Matthew 2). And Matthew’s account will end with Jesus receiving “all authority in heaven and on earth,” so he can commission his followers to extend his rule to all the nations of the earth (Matthew 28). 

In the unseeing eyes and unhearing ears Jesus encounters, he recognizes the same thing Isaiah had seen and heard when he warned of the coming of the Babylonian Captivity. Isaiah’s call to get right with God had gone largely unheeded. And so it is in Jesus’s day: “With them indeed is fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah that says: ‘You will indeed listen, but never understand, and you will indeed look, but never perceive’” (Matthew 13:14, quoting Isaiah 6:9). People are cutting themselves off from the promises of God, shutting themselves out of the Kingdom of heaven, and consigning themselves to the ongoing hell of separation from God and his good purposes. And it grieves Jesus.  

The function of the parables is to present the challenge to faith. There is no syllogistic path to truth in them. There is, rather, a word picture that we can write ourselves into, or not. In the context of the parables of Matthew 13, I see myself as “good soil” who hears, understands, and bears fruit—or not. I see myself as wheat, or tare; as going for the treasure, or ignoring it; as prizing the pearl of great price, or taking a pass on it; as good fish, or as bycatch. Jesus’s message in the parables: Choose wisely. May it be so for you and for me! 

Be blessed this day,  

Reggie Kidd+