The Four Voices - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Friday • 1/12/2024 •

Today we close out a two-week detour from the Daily Office. 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.   

“With Four-Part Harmony and Feeling”  

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Be blessed this day,  

Reggie Kidd+ 

Fly, Kessie, Fly! - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Thursday • 1/11/2024 •

We’re in week two of a two-week detour from the Daily Office. 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.   

“Fly, Kessie, Fly!” 

One measure of leadership is whether people are following you. 

A better measure is whether you are helping people “take wing.”  

That’s a lesson Rabbit has to learn in the award-winning episode “Find Her, Keep Her,” in Disney’s The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh.  

Rabbit rescues a female baby bird named Kessie during a snowstorm in the Hundred Acre Wood. For months, Rabbit nurses and cares for Kessie. Unfortunately, he becomes overly protective when she wants to learn to fly. Rabbit understands Kessie will eventually want to “fly south.” He will be left alone once more.  

Yet flying south is what birds do. And helping others take wing is what responsible caregivers do.  

As all Pooh stories do, this one ends the way it should. Rabbit learns, even though reluctantly, to let go. 

Hitting Home 

My wife recalls this story when our children make changes that reveal they are taking a new step towards independence, and away from us and from our influence. She finds letting go is not easy. And so, at these times, she still mutters to me under her breath, “Fly, Kessie, fly!” She understands what it is to forgo her own interests for the benefit of someone else. 

Leadership in God’s family is not much different.   

Kevin is a new senior pastor, with little background in worship ministry. He calls his old friend Ryan, an experienced worship pastor, and asks: “There’s been a lot of conflict over worship here, and I’ve inherited a pretty fragmented worship team. Would you work for me for a season and help me bring stability and unity, and earn my wings with this congregation in worship?” 

Over several months, a new-old team comes together, worship stops being a battle zone, and fans of “tradition” and fans of “freshness” begin deferring to one another.  

Great Idea 

At a meeting in the spring, Ryan, the worship pastor, offers: “Maundy Thursday is coming up. Historically, Maundy Thursday is a night the church remembers the ‘new commandment’ to love one another as Christ has loved us, and often celebrates that love with a foot washing service. We’ve seen a lot of cooperating and healing in this church. Why don’t we offer a foot washing service to affirm the love, unity, and healing this body has been experiencing?”  

Kevin, the senior pastor, responds, “That’d be a new thing for me, but it sounds like a great idea.” 

“The foot washing services I’ve led have provided powerful moments for brothers and sisters to experience the priesthood of all believers as they minister Christ’s love to one another,” Ryan adds. 

“Yeah, OK,” answers Kevin, “But what I think we need here is for the people in church to get the message that the leaders really love them. So I want only the pastors and the elders to do the washing of the congregation’s feet. I’ll tell the elders about my idea at our next meeting.” 

Suddenly, Ryan feels like he’s in the middle of a Dilbert comic strip. The pointy-haired boss is hijacking his idea, taking credit for it, and, in the process, ruining the whole concept. Ryan visualizes a thought bubble above his own head:  “Excuse me, but whose idea is this anyway!? You’ve never even seen a congregational foot washing, much less led one….” 

Then Ryan remembers there’s the Dilbert way of seeing things, and there’s the Jesus way of seeing things. He envisions a new thought bubble: “Hold on a minute! Where did that attitude come from? If washing feet is about kneeling to serve, about putting my brother’s interests ahead of my own, maybe that’s what I’m supposed to do in this case.” 

The words that manage to come out of Ryan’s mouth are, “Sounds like a plan! Let’s do it!!” 

Sink or Soar 

During the Maundy Thursday service four weeks later, Ryan, despite his best intentions, is still having internal thought-bubble conversations. The logistics that Kevin the senior pastor has insisted on require the worship team to lead music throughout communion and the foot washing. They will not get to receive communion or participate in the foot washing itself. 

Ryan’s thought bubble begins to complain, “It figures. I should have insisted on more control….”  

Ryan stops himself and looks around. Many in the congregation, profoundly moved by seeing pastors and elders taking the posture of servants, have eyes brimming with tears.  Ryan notices, too, a glistening in Kevin’s eyes as he imitates Jesus’ leadership example. 

And so a better thought bubble has the final say: “Pay attention, Ryan. A most awesome service is unfolding right in front of you. Jesus is in this house. And look at Kevin – you can almost see him growing softer and kinder with every foot he washes. He’s finding his wings.” 

After the service, it is discovered that Jesus has provided, by some happy accident, a small amount of bread and wine backstage. Ryan and his team share an intimate and amazing communion together before going home – and, of course, they wash each other’s feet. 

Best of all, Ryan realizes he has already been privileged to do a bit of foot washing – just not the way he had at first envisioned. Foot washing takes many forms.  

The strongest kind of leadership is the kind that helps others take wing: “Fly, Kessie, fly!”  

Be blessed this day, 

Reggie Kidd+ 

How Can I Keep from Singing? - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Wednesday • 1/10/2024 •

We’re in week two of a two-week detour from the Daily Office. 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.   

I Know Why the Prisoner Sings * 

For two millennia, Christians have sung their theology—from catacombs to dorm rooms, and from cathedrals to football stadiums. Every distinctive shape the faith takes – each its own “Jesus Movement” – finds its own musical voice. Ambrose’s robust trinitarianism both created and was supported by the florid hymnody of the church of fourth-century Milan. Gregorian chant both bespoke a quest of a spiritual music for the church and announced the ascendancy of the medieval church. In the sixteenth century, Martin Luther trumpeted his newfound grace as much through broadsheets and hymns as through sermons and books.  

Along the way, preachers and songsters have paired off, and sometimes the songsters have shaped the message as much as the preachers: John Calvin and Louis Bourgeois, John and Charles Wesley, Dwight Moody and Ira Sankey, Billy Graham and George Beverly Shea, Louie Giglio and Chris Tomlin. The evangelical uprising that began right after World War II, gained new life in the Jesus Movement of the 1960s, and persists into the beginning of the third millennium is characterized as much by its “praise and worship” as by anything else. When groups think about starting new churches, they are as anxious to establish their “sound” as they are their message. 

Image: Pixabay 

Hopeful Abandon 

God is in the process of reclaiming our lost planet, so singing fits the way things are. As a result, Christians have been irrepressible singers from day one. What J. R. R. Tolkien said is true: every fairy tale echoes the biblical drama—we were lost, and then we were found. Praise and thanks come unbidden to the surface of our being—and in the unbiddenness of our singing lies its rightness. 

A song will illustrate. One of my coworkers teases me: “I always know it’s you coming down the hall, because I hear the music first.” I am an incorrigible singer, hummer, and whistler. The one song that forces itself into my consciousness more than any other is this: 

My life goes on in endless song, above earth’s lamentations. 
I hear the real, though far-off hymn, that hails a new creation. 
Above the tumult and the strife, I hear its music ringing. 
It sounds an echo in my soul. How can I keep from singing? 

When tyrants tremble, sick with fear, and hear their death-knell ringing, 
When friends rejoice both far and near, how can I keep from singing? 
In prison cell and dungeon vile our thoughts to them are winging. 
When friends by shame are undefiled, how can I keep from singing? 

What though my joys and comforts die, the Lord my Saviour liveth. 
And though the darkness round me close, songs in the night he giveth. 
No storm can shake my inmost calm while to that Rock I’m clinging. 
Since Christ is Lord of heaven and earth, how can I keep from singing? 

Anne Warner composed this folk hymn in the middle of a most uncivil Civil War, and Doris Plenn reshaped it during the Cold War and its attendant paranoia. It is a hymn of courage in the face of tempest and darkness and tyrants.  

Trembling Courage 

My absolute favorite version of the song is Eva Cassidy’s kicking “gospel” rendering. She sang it while she was trying to fight off the malignant melanoma that would eventually take her life. Perhaps that’s why she sings with an urgency most who take up this song don’t have. I know that there are different kinds of “prison cells” and “dungeons vile,” and that melanoma—which I too contracted—is one of them. I know therefore that the gift of a song in the night does keep the darkness back, if barely—“Dear God, do not let my children grow up without a father.” And I know that a response of unbidden song rings true because, and only because, Christ is indeed “Lord of heaven and earth.” I hope this was Eva Cassidy’s hope—it is mine, for though my cancer was found at a much earlier stage than hers and appears to have been treated successfully, I know that the “far-off hymn” isn’t as far off as it was pre-cancer. I know in a way I didn’t before that Christ’s victory over the grave promises “new creation.” More importantly, I know that in the worst of my fears I can’t keep from singing; Christ has plundered death and hell. 

This hymn is a parable of the entire history of song in the church. It explains why we are such a singing lot. From the very beginning, God has been orchestrating a grand drama, the reclamation of his lost creation—and in operatic fashion, he has used the singing to his Jesus Movements to carry the story line.  

Be blessed this day,  

Reggie Kidd+ 

* Today’s post is adapted from Reggie M. Kidd, With One Voice: Discovering Christ’s Song in Our Worship (Grand Rapids, MI: BakerBooks, 2005), pp. 17–20.  

The Bible's Six-Word Story - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Tuesday • 1/9/2024 •

We’re in week two of a two-week detour from the Daily Office. 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.   

“Psalms Keep Us in God’s Story” 

There’s a story that Ernest Hemingway won a bet that he could write a six-word novel:  

“Baby shoes. For sale. Never used.”  

It’s hard to imagine so much punch being packed into so few words. But there it is. The story recently prompted a “flash fiction” movement, along with books like Larry Smith & Rachel Fershleiser’s Not Quite What I was Planning and a website (smithmag.net) offering collections of life stories in six words:   

“Birth, childhood, adolescence, adolescence, adolescence, adolescence…” 

“Bad brakes discovered at high speed.” 

“Stole wife. Lost friends. Now happy.” 

“Barrister, barista, what’s the diff, Mom?” 

“I still make coffee for two.” 

Many six-word stories make me pensive. Somehow, they remind me that the most common funeral inscription of the Roman world in which Christianity emerged was just such a six-word memoir: “Non fui. Non sum. Non curo.” (“I wasn’t. I’m not. … Don’t care.”) They also remind me that what got imprinted in me growing up was a similarly despairing six-word formula: “Expect bad. You won’t be disappointed.” 

Psalm 136’s Six-Word Story 

In the ESV, RSV, and NRSV, the second half of every verse of Psalm 136 is the six-word chorus: “For his steadfast love endures forever.” Over the course of 26 verses, we extol the glory of Yahweh as creator of the universe, then rescuer of his people. Twenty-six times we interrupt the flow of the psalm’s story with praise of Yahweh’s “steadfast love.”  

The universe, the psalm explains, didn’t have to be there. Everything that exists does so, not as the result of sheer randomness, nor for any other explanation than the steadfast love of the Lord. The only reason our world—and we in it!—are here is God’s steadfast love. 

Image: Pixabay 

The psalm skips over the fall, the flood, and the call of Abraham, and goes directly to a celebration of the rescue of Israel and the violent takeover of “lands for an inheritance.” The rescue and the takeover happen, we are invited to sing, because of God’s steadfast love.  

Through the obscure nation of Israel, seemingly doomed to expire in Egyptian captivity, God intends to right all that has gone wrong under the heavens he made “by wisdom.” The Bible’s whole storyline—from creation through re-creation—is a long study in steadfast love. So, even while we puzzle over the mysteries of creation, the enigmas of the texts that tell Israel’s tale (such as including the deaths of Egypt’s firstborn and of “great” and “mighty kings”), we take the long view. In God’s story, Psalm 136 reminds us, everything will be made right. 

Psalm 103’s Six-Word Story  

The first two verses of this psalm have an unusual audience: me. The psalm tells me to tell my soul to bless the Lord—which, of late, Matt Redman and the whole Church are echoing—and not to forget his benefits. It seems to know that such may not be my default mode of being. Several of my preacher friends talk about “preaching the gospel to myself.” I’d rather sing it—and this psalm shows me how.  

Verses three through five recount to my soul God’s six-word story for my life: “Forgiven. Healed. Redeemed. Crowned. Satisfied. Renewed.”   

Sometimes I chant those verses in plainsong (in his Plainsong Psalter, James Litton renders the psalm in Tone VIII.2). Sometimes I hum Paul Baloche’s “Praise the Lord, O My Soul.” Regardless, it’s as though the psalmist understood my “Expect bad…” mantra. It’s as though he had his own despairing six-word story: “Sinful. Sick. Doomed. Ashamed. Dissatisfied. Decaying.” And it’s as though he perceived that writing a psalm to the Lord was the only way to reverse it: “Bless the Lord, O my soul.” 

I’m glad Paul said to sing “psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs” (Eph 5:19; Col 3:16); they’re the way we keep telling the true story about our lives. Each kind of singing can have a particular effect. “Spiritual songs” remind us of the freshness of the Lord’s moving ... in our lives right now, in our particular church right here. “Hymns” unite us in the whole church’s celebration of the fact that Jesus Christ is the center of history. “Psalms” keep our own stories centered in God’s story. Thank you, Lord, for your six-word exhortation: “With psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs.” 

Be blessed this day,  

Reggie Kidd+ 

"Most Freaking Awesome!" - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Monday • 1/8/2024 •

We’re in week two of a two-week detour from the Daily Office. 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.   

Worship That Is “Most Freaking Awesome!” 

One year, I had to miss Father’s Day because of an out of town speaking engagement. I got home so late that night, I dropped my bags in the front hallway and went to bed. The next morning I got up at my usual zero-dark-thirty, made coffee, and headed for my study.  

When I walked bleary-eyed into my study, I caught a “presence” in my peripheral vision. I turned to look, and … Yikes! My coffee went everywhere. Freak out! Goosebumps! A tall person – thin, expressionless, motionless – Was.Standing.There.Staring.At.Me.  

After a few seconds, I realized that the “person” was a life-sized cardboard cutout of Sheldon Cooper from the TV series The Big Bang Theory. It turns out my wife thought this would be a fun welcome home surprise. BAZINGA! I laughed and laughed.   

Ultimate Awe 

When heaven and earth converge – or perhaps better – when the thin veil between them gets drawn back, it’s the sort of thing that makes your hair stand on end. God covers Mt. Sinai with “a blazing fire, and darkness, and gloom, and a tempest, and the sound of a trumpet, and a voice whose words made the hearers beg that not another word be spoken to them” (Heb 12:18 NRSV).  

According to the writer to the Hebrews there is a “Presence” among us even more more goosebump-raising than Mt. Sinai’s “blazing fire … darkness  … gloom … tempest … trumpet … voice.” “In these last days,” he says, “God has spoken through his Son, the reflection of God’s glory and the exact imprint of God’s very being” (Heb 1:2-3 NRSV).  

Supremely Amazing 

Not only that, but “through the eternal Spirit,” this Son has “offered himself without blemish to God” … to “purify our conscience from dead works to worship the living God!” (Heb 9:14 NRSV).  He could do so because he is the true Melchizedek, a priest and king whose ministry could not be cut short by death (Heb 7). As a result, he is now able to be in two places at once: physically in heaven at the Father’s right hand where he is – as the new Melchizedek – “Liturgist (or Worship Leader) in the sanctuary and the true tent” (Heb 8:2), and Spiritually (note the capital S) among us leading us in that worship. There and here at the same time, he pulls back the veil between heaven and earth and creates a reality that is truly goosebump-raising. That is what we taste in worship.  

The fourth century Greek-speaking church created a word for Christ’s goosebump-causing presence among us as our Liturgist and Worship Leader: phrikodestates (pronounced approximately “freak-oh-des-TAH-tays”). It’s an adjective in the superlative degree, based on a verb (phrisso) that means, literally: “shudder,” “get goose bumps,” or metaphorically, “be overcome with awe.” It wouldn’t be far off in modern vernacular to render phrikodestates as “most freaking awesome!” 

Commune 

For over 1,000 years the locus of awesomeness was the presence of the Lord at the Table. Thus, the 4th century’s Cyril of Jerusalem said that at the Eucharist we “Lift up our hearts to the Lord” because we have come to a “phrikodestates hour.” And rightly has the church celebrated that awesomeness, because our great Liturgist, the new Melchizedek, has brought us to an altar from which “those who serve the tent have no right to eat” (Heb 13:9) – but from which we do!  

Faith by Hearing 

In the Reformation of the 16th century, the locus of awesomeness became the presence of the Lord in the proclamation of the Word and the rediscovery of the Bible in worship. And rightly has the Church celebrated that awesomeness, because Our Great Liturgist is among us declaring the Father’s name to us (Heb 2:12a).  

Intercessory Evangelism  

In the great “awakenings” and “revivals” of the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries, the locus of awesomeness became the presence of the Lord in the conversion of the soul – and by extension in the mission to the world. And rightly has the church celebrated that awesomeness because Our Great Liturgist is at the Father’s right hand, “ever interceding” that the lost will be found and the found will be cleansed, preserved, and gathered to the Father at the end (Heb 7:25).  

Inhabited Praise 

In the wake of the Charismatic Renewal, the locus of awesomeness has become the Lord’s “habitation in the praises” (Psalm 22:3). And rightly has the church celebrated that awesomeness because the Risen Christ – Chief Musician in the new order of Melchizedek – “sings hymns” to the Father in the assembly (Heb 2:12b).  

Holy Convergence 

Oh for the day when we all know Christ’s phrikodestates presence in all aspects of worship: at the Table, in the Word, in intercession, and in praise! 

Be blessed this day,  

Reggie Kidd+ 

Knowing that Christ is King - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Friday • 1/5/2024 • 

We’re taking a two-week 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.   

Dude! Bach is Bodacious! 

If I could borrow Bill & Ted’s most excellent time-traveling phone booth, one of my first stops would be Leipzig, Germany, January 6, 1735. That’s the time and place one of the greatest worship leaders of all time worked some of his deepest magic.  

Beginning on Christmas Day that 1734-1735 Christmas season, Johann Sebastian Bach had treated his congregation in Leipzig to five different cantatas celebrating different aspects of Christ’s birth. Now, on the Day of Epiphany (celebrating Christ’s “manifestation” as Savior of the world), Bach closes out his Christmas Oratorio with a sixth cantata.  

This last cantata in the Christmas cycle is an extended meditation on the Gentile magi bringing tribute to Israel’s — and their — newly born King. That’s standard Epiphany fare, with, of course, desperately power-mad King Herod playing the churlish foil, a pretend king resisting the coming of the true King. Yeah, we’ve all heard it before. So had Bach’s congregants.  

Image: Pixabay license

How to get their attention? How to keep the sublime truth of the magnificent reign of King Jesus and the stunning overthrow of faux-sovereigns like Herod from becoming just so much background music for our distracted lives?  

I wish I could have been there to hear the closing piece of the Christmas Oratorio BVW 248, “Nun seid ihr wohl gerochen” (English translation below).* For the first thirty seconds of the final piece of the cantata, the orchestra blasts out a bright baroque trumpet fanfare. They’re in the key of D major — the brightest and most triumphant of keys. Suddenly, the choir breaks in. The feel is still triumphant, and the key is still D major, but the tune is “O Sacred Head Now Wounded” — a melody that people had associated with Jesus’s suffering for our sins long before Bach made it the centerpiece of his St. Matthew’s Passion seven years earlier. The text the choir is singing now, though, is not about Jesus’s suffering. It’s about his victory over all that is evil, and about our resuming our rightful place at God’s right hand: 

Now are You well avenged 
Upon your enemies, 
For Christ has broken asunder 
All might of adversaries. 
Death, Devil, Sin, and Hellfire 
Are vanquished entirely; 
In its true place, by God’s side 
Now stands the human race. 

Jaws must have been dropping. I know I would have been in tears. The precious truth of Jesus’s mission to die as our substitute can so easily become a coping mechanism at best, a prompt to morbid self-absorption at worst. The complementary truth of Jesus’s mission as our “Christus Victor” calls us to do more than merely put up with life’s tough stuff. Somehow King Jesus empowers us to share in his reclamation of life. Knowing that Christ is King “fortifies” us, as Calvin says, “with courage to stand unconquerable against all the assaults of spiritual enemies” (Institutes 2.15.4).  

Worship is a place where we get to enjoy the whole package deal. Worship craftsmanship calls forth from us — as it did from master worship leader J. S. Bach — the most faithfully imaginative ways of expanding our spirits to take in the fullness of God’s story. Christ is our substitute. We sob. Christ is our champion. We dance. He bears our sins. We drop to our knees. He breaks our bondage to sin. We rise with hands uplifted. He suffers for the world. We intercede. He empowers us to make the world different. We go to tell and live the story — excellently, even bodaciously.  

Be blessed this day,  

Reggie Kidd+ 

Sidebar — Resources 

We’re all called to exercise the craft of worship leadership in different settings. Regardless of your setting, you personally may find Bach a worthy docent. No one has ever embodied theology more profoundly in music. Before we get too far past Christmas and Epiphany, his Christmas Oratorio would be worth a listen.  

Let me also recommend church historian Jaroslov Pelikan’s brilliant little book, Bach Among the Theologians (Wipf & Stock, 1986, 2003). Read about — and, of course, listen to — the way Bach fleshed out the twin portraits of “Christ our Substitute” in his Saint Matthew Passion and of “Christus Victor” in his Saint John Passion.  

* The YouTube rendering here is by Canzona and the Pacific Baroque Orchestra, 12/24/2020 

Color Added - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Thursday • 1/4/2024 •

Welcome to Daily Office Devotions. I’m Reggie Kidd. Thanks for joining me. We’re taking a detour from the Daily Office readings for a few days, as we consider several aspects of worship: corporate and personal. The thoughts offered here are excerpts from articles I wrote for Worship Leader Magazine a few years ago. We’ll resume our reflections on the Daily Office this next Monday. 

“COLOR ADDED” 

Some of us serve in a building that is an unadorned, multimedia-accommodating “box” that we are able to treat as a canvas for telling God’s story. We can fill it with lights and sights and sounds any way we wish, any time we wish. I have spent many of my ministry years in such a setting. It’s a delight to play with visual and aural textures, and to take on the challenge of imagining anew the Christian story week after week.  

Some of us serve in a building that is clearly and intentionally designed for “church.” I am spending the present phase of my ministry in this sort of setting: a cathedral of Gothic Revival design. Stained glass panels encompass the worship space with a rehearsal of the biblical story. An altar is both the visual and liturgical focal point of the room. Pulpit to the side, but elevated and extending out toward the congregation. Pipe organ. Pews with kneelers. A lingering scent of incense. I am learning that fixed features can bring their own delight.  

Permanence… 

The New Testament portrays the Church as something that is both dynamic and changing, on the one hand, and solid and immovable, on the other. To be sure, the Church is made up of “living stones,” and is constantly growing (1Peter 2:5; Ephesians 2:21). At the same time, Christ’s Church is also “the pillar and foundation of the truth” (1Timothy 3:16). It’s as though we need “wings to fly” and “feet firmly planted.” Opposites? No, not really.  

I am appreciating the way the building I’m in communicates the solidity of our faith. Twelve massive pillars – each bearing the shield of one of the 12 apostles – surround us as we worship. Stained glass panels depict Jesus’ life and ministry on the lower level, and Old and New Testaments saints on the upper level. It’s marvelous to be surrounded by such a great “cloud of witnesses.”  

… But Not Perfection 

No other entity on earth will last beyond the Lord’s return – no government, no economy, no relationship – only Christ and his Bride, the Church. Nor, even in this age, it seems to me, is there any more compelling an argument to be made for the truth of the faith than the existence of the Church itself. As Cardinal Ratzinger (before becoming Pope Benedict XVI) offered: “The only really effective apologia for Christianity comes down to two arguments, namely, the saints the Church has produced and the art which has grown in her womb.” 

What speaks so profoundly about the Church’s existence is that we are a community of people who are forgiven and know it. Flawed and owning it. Loved in spite of ourselves, thus under compulsion to love in response.  

A Mystery 

Early in my days at the cathedral after a worship service, I was surveying the Old and New Testament figures portrayed in the stained glass panels around the top of the building. It was no small help that the names of the saints were part of each panel. But there was one panel that nearly stumped me. It was a panel of Moses, but from my vantage point below, it looked like the name “Moses” was upside down and backwards, and indeed it was. 

A number of people I asked had the impression it had been done that way on purpose to “remind generations that only God is perfect.” Anne Michels, the Cathedral Archivist, had heard that account for years, and called Willet Studios in Philadelphia to confirm the story. (They created our stained glass … as well as the stained glass in the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C.) According to Willet Studios, when the Moses stained glass was installed in the late 1980s, the panel with his name was inserted upside down by accident. The letters (as you can see) are stylized. Nobody seemed to notice the mistake until the work was finished. At that point, they were left alone. And as such, they stood as a reminder that only God is perfect, or in Anne Michels’s words, “they are for us a message of the futility of works. If we try to work our way to perfection, we’ll never get there.” 

The mistake was allowed to stand until we had it corrected in 2020. Whenever I look up at Moses, I am reminded, as a friend put it to me, that “the most beautiful of our creations this side of glory are still fallen creations. We are forgiven people, living in hope.” People who talk that way let me know I am where I need to be. Those are the kind of lives that commend the faith. This is the kind of art that grows – by a combination of inspired purpose and providential accident – in the womb of the church.  

Symbolic East …  

Early Christians were known for praying facing the east. That’s because, notes Gregory of Nyssa (central Asia Minor, 4th century), East is the birthplace of humankind and the earthly garden of paradise. As Thomas Aquinas (Italy, 13th century) was later to observe: East is the place of our Lord – his life and death, and the direction from which he will come on judgment day.  

Jesus’ incarnation, death, and resurrection is the dawn of new creation. That’s what John the Baptist’s father, Zechariah, anticipated when he sang about “the rising Sun” visiting us (Luke 1:78 NJB – the term is anatolē, lit., “east,” a term that was understood either to refer to the morning star, Venus, or to the rising sun itself). That’s what early Christians recalled when they noticed that the Greek Old Testament had translated the messianic promise of a “Branch” (Heb. tsemaḥ) as “Dawn” (NET – again, anatolē; Zechariah 3:8; 6:12; Jeremiah 23:5). 

Accordingly, when Christians began building church buildings, they put them on an east-west axis when they could – the door of entry to the west, and the pulpit and Table to the east. We came from Paradise … then lost Paradise through a bad exchange and are being reoriented to Paradise through our Second Adam’s mission of love to regain his Bride. That cosmology – that symbolic shaping of our world – alone gives us our bearings in a world that has no bearings.  

To reinforce that symbolic reshaping of space, my church is laid out on an east-west axis – except for this: it’s backwards. So the architectural plans show literal east as “Symbolic West” and literal west as “Symbolic East.” I love that! Getting true directionality is clearly not about literalism. That means it doesn’t especially matter whether you have stained glass or screens, pews or cafeteria chairs, an organ or a band, you can point “east,” as long as you know what you are looking for. 

… With “Color Added” 

I’ve served urban and suburban churches, and churches in university towns and in beach towns. I’ve appreciated the way each has acknowledged and embraced the place of its setting. Orlando, Florida, was a small town in the 1920s when the cathedral was built. Back then Central Florida was awash in citrus groves, not tourist attractions. To honor its city’s roots and to help to tell its “story,” the cathedral frames one of the stained glass panels – one that places Jesus among his disciples – with stained glass oranges. In letters barely large enough to see, one of the oranges bears the characteristic citrus industry stamp: “COLOR ADDED.”  

“There are no unsacred places,” offers Wendell Berry, “there are only sacred places and desecrated places.” The Lord has given each of us a place to sanctify. Whether with technology that is dazzling and electronic or that is simple and acoustic, whether across a canvas that constantly evolves or within a fixed environment that stolidly invites you to discover its nuances, may we embrace, enhance, and redeem local “color.” 

Be blessed this day, 

Reggie Kidd+ 

A Holy Restlessness Part 3 - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Wednesday • 1/3/2024 •

We’re taking a two-week detour from the Daily Office readings. 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.   

Holy Restlessness:  
Using the Past to Innovate Your Service of Worship,  
Part Three of Three 

In the first two installments of this three-part series on “Holy Restlessness,” we have looked at the life of the medieval peasant monk who became Abbot of the Cathedral of St. Denis near Paris. We’ve noted the way his discovery of a “theology of light” gave him a holy discontentment with the dark and gloomy spaces in which Christians worshiped up until his day. We saw the way his audacious imagination inspired by that theology of light led him to take risks that wound up reimagining how churches could be refashioned in such a way as to bathe worship in light.  

In today’s final episode, we learn valuable lessons from Suger about the creative use of available resources and about how to exercise innovative wisdom.  

Use of “The Available” 

Part of Abbot Suger’s remarkable success lay in the fact that he did not so much scrap the Romanesque architecture that the Western churches had been using for nearly a thousand years before him, as much as he creatively adapted it. Moreover, to the extent he could, he used materials he found at hand. He did so fabulously. At first he thought he would have to import stone for the building. However, as he was later to write: 

Through a gift of God a new quarry, yielding very strong stone, was discovered such as in quality and quantity had never been found in these regions. There arrived a skillful crowd of masons, stonecutters, sculptors and other workmen, so that – thus and otherwise – Divinity relieved us of our fears.  

Searching the local woods for building materials, he believed God personally led him to the exact timbers he needed to support the church building’s ceiling.  He saw God’s provision locally at every step of the construction process. 

As Gothic architecture spread across Europe, it had a number of common features. But each region gave it its own signature, depending on local materials and tastes. French used fine white limestone because it was available, English used coarse limestone and red sandstone for the same reason; Germans and Dutch and Belgians and Poles built from brick because stone was unavailable locally.  Taking advantage of resources at hand made cathedral building realistic and achievable far beyond Suger’s monastery north of Paris.  

Innovative Wisdom 

Innovation happens when you inhabit a world that gives you a holy restlessness that sparks an audacious imagination. Innovation happens when you have the authority to effect a change, and the discernment to recognize what you can actually pull off. And finally, innovation happens when you creatively use the resources that are available to you.  

It is not innovative to force round pegs into square holes. It is not innovative to throw out an entire repertoire and bring in something that will feel like “strange fire.” It is innovative to ask: “At this moment, what is missing that people would appreciate as ‘value added’?” And, more importantly, what do we have the resources to do well?”  

An ancient voice persuaded Abbot Suger that worship could be enhanced, and more, reflect the character of God, if the worship happened in a place filled with light and lofty space. Suger’s ideas permanently changed the way worship spaces are created. Even if not “Gothic cathedral” in style, church designs continue to echo those concepts. 

As we sense in ourselves a “holy restlessness” we may discover that it is not the latest, newest thing that will add value to our ministry, but something older. It might be as simple as introducing an ancient practice, like chanting; or it may be as profound as taking an idea, like “God is light”, and transforming forever the worshiping world. 

Be blessed this day,  

Reggie Kidd+ 

A Holy Restlessness Part 2 - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Tuesday • 1/2/2024 •

We’re taking a two-week detour from the Daily Office readings. 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.   

Holy Restlessness:  
Using the Past to Innovate Your Service of Worship,  
Part Two of Three 

Yesterday, we considered the way the French medieval peasant monk Suger discovered a theology of light. Today, we explore the way his audacious imagination inspired by that theology of light led him to take risks that wound up revolutionizing worship in his day.  

Audacious Imagination 

Sometimes it helps to be an amateur. Because Abbot Suger had not had the blinders of formal architectural training, he was innocent of the principles that dictated thick walls and small windows.  

Happily, Suger lived in a time of much experimentation with church architecture. However, no one before him imagined bringing as many innovations together in one building, because no one had yet become so driven to implement a fresh vision of height and light to worship.  

He imagined displacing weight from the walls themselves onto faux walls that would run perpendicular to the actual walls –what we now call “flying buttresses.” Working with his masons, Suger combined several fresh architectural features that allowed a tall skeletal structure to support wide windows: the flying buttresses, a revolutionary arch system, and clustered columns.  

Suger’s chief contribution was the concept of a ribbed vault, or arch system, using slender diagonal ribs of stone, to support the ceiling and roof. This configuration allowed modification in the construction of walls. Instead of the earlier massive and unyielding masonry, the walls of the chapels that surrounded Suger’s chancel area consisted of sixteen wide/large stained-glass windows that told redemption’s story and beamed multi-colored light onto a polished mosaic floor. It was dazzlingly beautiful, as Suger himself noted: “The entire sanctuary is thus pervaded by a wonderful and continuous light entering through the most sacred windows.”  

Abbot Suger’s building project at Saint-Denis marked a decisive beginning for a whole new movement in architecture,  eventually named “Gothic.” Historian Daniel Boorstin summarizes: “The new luminous skeleton of stone proclaimed a Church no longer on the defensive, but reaching prayerfully up to God and triumphantly to the world in an architecture of light.”  

Free to Fail 

Innovations can fail to occur for one of two reasons. Would-be innovators try things they don’t have the authority to do. Non-innovators fail to try things they could have accomplished if only they’d had the courage.  

Many years ago, a wise pastor told me: “Reggie, when it comes to authority, people mess up in one of two ways. Either they try to use authority they mistakenly think they have – for which they eventually get themselves fired. Or they don’t understand how much authority they actually do have, and they play it way too safe. They don’t have the audacity to try anything that could get them fired, so they just wither, even if they keep their job. Your temptation will be to play it safe and wither. I want you to try things that could get you fired.”  That pastor encouraged freedom and flexibility, opportunity and openness, for the staff at his church. Risk-taking in an environment with this kind of permission was an awesome and unforgettable experience. 

Abbot Suger’s story provides a worthwhile study in understanding what is possible to achieve in one’s own setting. It was Suger’s happy providence to have attended the same school in the monastery of Saint-Denis alongside the future king Louis VI of France. Later, he served the King well on a number of diplomatic missions, and he received free reign to think boldly about what he could accomplish, and he had access to any resources he needed.  

That’s just not going to be the case for most of us. Few of us have access to unlimited funds, or a personal relationship with someone as powerful as an earthly king. But we all have some measure of authority and relationship with a heavenly King. And therefore, discernment is an essential element in the employment of that authority in the service of “kingdom” innovation. 

Go … or Let Go? 

In basketball, one of the most difficult things for a player to acquire is the intuition to know when to pass the ball and when to take the shot, when to make an attempt and when to let it go. How do you know if something is a good idea or a bad idea? Go or no-go? 

Scripture redounds with wisdom for discerning what innovations you ought to attempt. For example, Saul did not have the authority to offer sacrifice, but David did have the authority to eat the showbread. Simon Magus did not have the authority to use the Spirit to turn a quick buck, but Jesus did heal on the Sabbath.  

The Gentile gift for the Jewish church, conceived by the Apostle Paul in a difficult year of consensus-building, was perhaps the single most innovative project of the entire New Testament: a concrete symbol of Gentile and Jewish oneness in the gospel. Even then, Paul knew he was taking a calculated risk, and that things might not come off smoothly (see Acts 21:10-14; Romans 15:30-33). It was a good thing that Paul factored in the possibility of “failure”: he was arrested in Jerusalem and wrongly accused of allowing Gentiles to defile the Temple.  

Paul understood the limits of his authority and the extent of the risks involved in this innovative enterprise. Yet it was a “failure” only in a short term sense. Theologically, his arrest led him to some of his richest reflection on Gentile and Jewish oneness (Ephesians 2). Missiologically, his arrest provided him the opportunity to demand an audience with the Emperor.   

Today, in this second installment of “Holy Restlessness,” we’ve considered important lessons on worship leadership from Abbot Suger’s life: how discernment requires assessing accurately your authority, ascertaining the appropriateness of your idea, recognizing resources and risks, and estimating the effectiveness of initiating an innovation. In tomorrow’s third and final instalment, we will explore the way creative and successful worship leadership works with what resources are available and exercises innovative wisdom. Meanwhile, … 

…be blessed this day,  

Reggie Kidd+ 

A Holy Restlessness Part 1 - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Monday • 1/1/2024 •

We’re taking a two-week 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.   

Holy Restlessness:  
Using the Past to Innovate Your Service of Worship,  
Part One of Three 

Much of what insulated me from the toxic secularism of modern biblical scholarship in graduate school were the texts of the first half millennium of the church’s life. I came to recognize that across the centuries and across our cultures I shared much more with the likes of Ignatius of Antioch (d. 117) and the anonymous writer to Diognetus (early 2nd century) and Clement of Alexandria (ca. early 3rd century) than I did with the modern secularists who had come to set the agenda for modern biblical studies.  

When, many years later, Robert Webber invited me to consider not just the ideas of those ancient church writers but also their worship and their prayers and their songs, I came to realize that they thought so well because they worshiped and prayed and sang so well. 

When I realized how chanting brought “head and heart” together, I began to introducing chant to my students. We practiced the basics of plainsong chant in the “Sacred Stairwell,” and returning students tell me they continue to chant during their personal devotional time. Among my students, there’s an excitement in learning to worship using these practices of the early church. As one student exclaimed on Facebook recently, “Chanting the Nicene Creed in Greek! How I love New Testament Greek!” I appreciate taking something old and making it new. 

We are a creative bunch, we worship folk. Not only can we take ancient traditions and re-introduce them in new settings, we can also take ideas, and sculpt, chisel, mold, paint, project, pen, imagine, build them into something no one ever dreamed before. 

A Peasant Monk 

Enter one 12th century French statesman-abbot, known only as Suger (1081?-1151), abbot of the monastery of Saint-Denis, a suburb of Paris. Abbot Suger was a small man of small beginnings. Born in northern France, his peasant family handed him over at age ten to be raised by the local monastery. Suger felt orphaned, and came to think of the monastery as his true family. He latched on to the “upward-leading” theology of his monastery’s patron saint: St. Dionysius the Areopagite, one of the two converts Luke names from Paul’s ministry in Athens (Acts 17:34).  

In legend, Paul’s Athenian convert had brought the gospel to northern France. In reality, it had been a third century namesake who had done so. In legend, Paul’s Athenian convert had written several books of theology, with the theme of “God is light.” In reality, it had been a fifth or sixth century anonymous writer who had done so using Dionysius as a pen name.  

Regardless, “Saint Dionysius” (shortened to “Saint Denis”) was a voice from the ancient church who shaped Suger’s whole being: Saint Denis gave Suger an identity, an inspiration, and a mission.  

Though the pauper boy would eventually rise to become the monastery’s abbot, he was always conscious of his lowly origins: “I, the beggar, whom the strong hand of the Lord has lifted up from the dunghill.”  

Suger responded wholeheartedly to the generally “upward” lift of Dionysius’s theology, and especially to the theologian’s description of God as pure and creative light.  

Out of Darkness 

By the year 1200, churches in the West had been accustomed for a thousand years to worshiping in the dark. First it was because of persecution. Before Constantine’s conversion, the church was – both metaphorically and literally – an underground movement. Churches had to meet in secret, sometimes in homes by night, often in catacombs by candlelight. After the Roman emperor’s conversion in the 4th century, the church moved above ground and experienced rapid – almost alarming – growth. The church’s success meant the building of larger and larger spaces for worship. Rather than private homes and small secret places, churches convened in large public spaces. But believers still worshiped in relative darkness because big buildings required strong thick walls to support the roof. Because windows would weaken the stability of the walls, windows were small and permitted very little light to enter the worship space. Thus, the bigger the building, the thicker the walls, and the tinier the windows.  

“There’s got to be a better way.” A voice from a different time and place might alert you to a biblical value that is missing from your own time and place.  The biblical value won’t leave you alone. There’s a gap between your reality and your vision. Great seeds of innovation often develop by rooting yourself in another reality – one that can give you a holy restlessness with what “is,” and the mental and spiritual space to imagine what “can be.”  

So it was with Abbot Suger.  

When, at the age of about 40, Suger was elected abbot of his monastery, he inherited a church building that was in ruins. For years he had meditated on the leading ideas of his theological hero, Dionysius. If, as the Bible teaches and as Dionysius had expounded, God is light and in him there is no darkness (1 John 1:5), why does our worship have to be done in the dark? And why in such a dismal and dilapidated building? 

It seemed to Suger that a church ought to have a beauty and a loft to it that took us “from the material to the immaterial.”  Its interior should be filled with light so that the worship space would itself remind us that God is “the Father of the lights” and that his Son is “the first radiance” who reveals the Father to the world.  

Was there a way to rebuild the dim and deteriorating building? Could it be done in such a way that brought into worship the light and resplendence of which he had been reading? 

Today, we’ve considered the way this peasant monk discovered a theology of light. Tomorrow we’ll explore the way an audacious imagination inspired by that theology of light led him to take risks that wound up revolutionizing worship in his day.  

Be blessed this day,  

Reggie Kidd+ 

Jesus Offers to Fix What’s Broken - Daily Devotions with the Dean

• Sunday • 12/31/2023 

New Year’s Eve Day, Year Two  

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 46; Psalm 48; 1 Kings 3:5–14; James 4:13–17; 5:7–11; John 5:1–15 

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. I’m Reggie Kidd, and it’s a joy to be with you today, the Seventh Day of Christmas, which also happens to be New Year’s Eve Day. Happy New Year, in advance!  

Turning towards a new year, I think less in terms of resolutions, and more in terms of requests from the God from whom every good gift comes. God’s Word commends four worthy requests: 

1 Kings 3: Solomon and a wise and discerning heart. King Solomon represents an elevated phase in God’s plan to restore the human race to its fundamental mission: to tend God’s garden, to exercise dominion over creation, and to make the earth redound to his glory.  

I daresay none of us has quite the governing responsibilities of a Solomon. But every one of us does have some realm to rule or space to oversee. It may be a kitchen to keep clean and productive, a lawn to tend, a store to manage, a spreadsheet to keep balanced, maybe even, I dunno, a rocket to help launch.  

The greatest gift we can seek from the Lord is that which Solomon sought: a grasp of the reality we face, its opportunities and its challenges; and the wisdom to discern how to further God’s beautifying and redemptive purposes for the creation he loves.  

 Prayer for Guidance: Direct us, O Lord, in all our doings with your most gracious favor, and further us with your continual help; that in all our works begun, continued, and ended in you, we may glorify your holy Name, and finally, by your mercy, obtain everlasting life; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. (BCP, p. 832) 

Image: iStock photo 

James 4: Circumspection in planning. James 4:13–17’s wisdom is an expansion of Proverbs 16:9, “The mind of a person plans their way, but Yahweh directs their steps” (my translation). I can’t help but think of the semi-irreverent adage: “We plan. God laughs.” He may not laugh at us, but perhaps we should laugh at ourselves when we think we have life all planned out. The past couple of years have called upon every person I know to be flexible, adaptable, and nimble. It’s been a time to reckon much more seriously with passages like this one. We are fragile, and our days on this earth are fleeting. James cautions us against smugly over-planning: “Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wishes, we will live and do this or that” (James 4:15).  

It’s not a bad thing to have been put in a position where we are virtually forced to pray along with the psalmist: “Teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom” (Psalm 90:12).  

James 5: The ability to wait out hard times. As if you need to be told, crazy abounds. Miami Herald columnist and novelist Carl Hiaasen was once asked how he could expect his readers to accept his utterly bizarre scenarios about life in South Florida. His answer was (I paraphrase from memory): “Every time I write something that seems over the top, and tell myself people will think I’ve lost my grip on reality, I read something crazier in the newspaper. My imagination isn’t big enough to capture the crazy.” That’s our world. A once-in-a-century killer disease rages. The corridors of power ring with incivility. News agencies pick sides. People in everyday life do the stupidest things, and keep the 24/7 news cycle cycling.  

James says, “Be patient, therefore, beloved, until the coming of the Lord. … You also must be patient. Strengthen your hearts…” (James 5:7a,8a). To some extent, what we are called to do (besides calling out what craziness we can!) is to outlast it. Yes, crazy comes in waves. Those waves will crest and crash and eventually exhaust themselves. We must simply keep ourselves from being swept under or away. God, give us grace.  

Prayer for Quiet Confidence: O God of peace, you who have taught us that in returning and rest we shall be saved, in quietness and in confidence shall be our strength: By the might of your Spirit lift us, we pray you, to your presence, where we may be still and know that you are God; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. (BCP, p. 832) 

John 5: The willingness to accept healing from Jesus. Jesus offers to fix what’s broken, in this case, non-functioning legs, for a man he encounters by a healing pool in Jerusalem. And Jesus winds up healing him over his excuse-making: “Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up; and while I am making my way, someone else steps down ahead of me” (John 5:7).  

It may not be our legs that don’t work. It may not be that we have seen opportunity after opportunity to address our brokenness pass us by for 38 years. But we all have reservoirs of hurt or secret obsessions or masked pretenses that one day will have to be purged. And it may be that this next year is when Jesus will come up to us and ask, “Do you want to be made well?” (John 5:6b). May God give us the grace to say “Yes!” to Jesus.  

Prayer for Trust in God in Time of Sickness: O God, the source of all health: So fill my heart with faith in your love, that with calm expectancy I may make room for your power to possess me, and gracefully accept your healing; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. (BCP, p. 461).  

Be blessed this day, and every day in the year ahead! 

Reggie Kidd+