Paradise Regained - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Friday • 6/28/2024 •

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 102; Numbers 20:1-13; Romans 5:12-21; Matthew 20:29-34

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)

A Flawed Mediator. Because you did not trust in me, to show my holiness before the eyes of the Israelites, therefore you shall not bring this assembly into the land that I have given them. — Numbers 20:12. As sympathetic a figure as Moses is—humblest on the earth, ever interceding for a rebellious people, and friend of Yahweh—he shows himself to be as powerless against sin as the rest of us. 

The Lord has simply told Moses to command the rock (and not, by the way, to scold the people) so that the water will flow for the people and their livestock. But Moses works himself up into a fury against the thirsty people. Not content obediently to command the rock, he oversteps and strikes the rock with the staff of God’s authority, and that not once, but twice. In Yahweh’s estimation, this lack of trust places Moses in solidarity with the rest of his generation that had tested Yahweh—those who identified with Nadab and Abihu (Leviticus 10), the gluttons from the first plague (Numbers 11), the ten cowardly spies (Numbers 14), and most recently Korah and company, and the 14,700 who died in the second plague (Numbers 16). Moses will be the last of his generation to perish without entering the Promised Land—though, friend of God that he is, not without a glimpse of it. 

It’s a scene with a lot of pathos. It’s a sober reminder to all of us to be vigilant, as the hymn says, to “trust and obey.”

Image: Adaptation, Pixabay

Paradise Regained. As a whole, the Old Testament unfolds as a saga of expulsion from the Garden—of exile from Paradise, a life in perfect communion with God—and of God’s preparing a way for humankind to return. Israel is entrusted with the oracles of God. Her mission is to bear the promise of return, and at the same time, the burden of its cost. We’ve just seen that Moses—the law-giver and one who spoke face to face with Yahweh himself—is susceptible to the curse of disobedience that is common to all humankind. 

Carrying forward the storyline of that saga, the epistle to the Romans is animated by an incredible sense of peace, hope, and confidence (for instance, in Romans 5:1-11—yesterday’s reading). The way “back in” has opened up. In today’s reading—some of the densest and most pregnant sentences he is ever to compose—Paul explains the source of such peace, hope and confidence. In Jesus Christ, Israel has ushered onto the stage of world history—and into our personal lives—the One who undoes the tragedy of the Garden. 

In brief, here are the points Paul makes in this brilliant paragraph: 

1. The “fall”—along with death that accompanied it—was a natural and just consequence of Adam’s disobedience; but the free gift of eternal life is an extraordinary, countervailing manifestation of “God’s grace” and his “gracious gift in Christ” (v. 15). 

2. It might have been easy for God to intervene to fix things immediately after the fall, but he did it only “after many transgressions” (i.e., after the situation had become arguably unfixable — v. 16). The fall set in motion a sorrowful domino-like series of tragedies (think Shakespeare), that would magnify the loving and merciful character of God in a way that something resolvable by a quick fix would not. Human self-help couldn’t reverse the cumulative effects of “many transgressions.” But God could. And he did. 

3. In sum: One man, Christ, offers “righteous conduct” (dikaioma)—i.e., the obedience of his whole life and of his mounting the cross of Calvary—that leads to the “rightwise-ing/justifying/making right” (dikaiosis) of all. One man, Christ, offers the perfect obedience that undoes the first man’s disobedience. 

4. Thus, while in the present, “sin reigns” because Adam forfeited his/our right to rule, when all is said and done “those who receive…the gift of righteousness will reign” (v. 17) and “grace also will reign” (v. 21). 

5. Result: the entrance of sin into human experience will prove to have brought about God’s greater grace (vv. 20-21). The line from the original “Exsultet” comes to mind: “O truly needful sin of Adam which was blotted out by the death of Christ! O happy fault (felix culpa) which merited so great a Redeemer!” 

I pray that our lives may be as animated as are Paul’s words with the sense of peace, hope, and confidence that comes from knowing that, in Christ, grace has taken the field on our behalf. And I pray we all may grip firmly onto the deep understanding that that grace is greater than all the evil, all the confusion, all the sickness we see around—and in—ourselves. 

Be blessed this day, 

Reggie Kidd+

Life from a Dead Tree - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Thursday • 6/27/2024 •

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 105:1-22; Numbers 17:1-11; Romans 5:1-11; Matthew 20:17-28

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)

Signature insights from Numbers, Romans, and Matthew wondrously converge in today’s readings. 

Life from a Tree. When Moses went into the tent of the covenant on the next day, the staff of Aaron for the house of Levi had sprouted. It put forth buds, produced blossoms, and bore ripe almonds. — Numbers 20:8. Life emerges from a dead tree, proof of God’s choice of Aaron’s priesthood. This is one of the amazing portraits of the coming Mediator in the book of Numbers. Millennia later God will prove his choice of Jesus’s priesthood in similar fashion, by raising him to life after death on Calvary’s tree. The writer to the Hebrews reminds us that Aaron was priest solely by God’s choice (Hebrews 5:8), and that Jesus too is priest solely by God’s choice. Further, Hebrews points up the way the almond-graced rod was preserved in the ark as a permanent reminder of Aaron’s priesthood (Hebrews 9:3), and then portrays Jesus’s ongoing ministry as “high priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek” (Hebrews 6:20, and following). While Aaron’s mortality meant that he had to be followed by many priests of his lineage, Jesus’s resurrection means he ministers forever: proclaiming the Father’s name, singing in the midst of the congregation, ever living to intercede, and bringing bread and wine from God’s holy altar (Hebrews 2:12; 7:25; 13:10). Although his work on the cross for us has been completed, Jesus does not cease his work in our lives. Even now. His ongoing ministry means he is praying for his church, praying for each of us. Praise be. 

Image: Adaptation, Pixabay

Paul’s John 3:16. But God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us. — Romans 5:8. If there is one truth in Paul’s letters that is worth burning into our brains, it’s this one. The life-giving tree on which Christ hung is all the proof any of us needs that God does not hate us, but instead loves us. God gave his Son up to death that we may escape the wrath we deserve (Romans 5:9), and so that we may boast that on the day of the great reckoning we will have a share in the glory of God (Romans 5:3,10-11). That word, “boast,” gives some of us a little trouble. It is often too closely linked with “bluster” and “brag”—so, not in a good way.  Paul doesn’t intend us to think of boasting as an excessive, vain, self-centered behavior. Rather, it’s a bit more like being proud of, and proclaiming the praises of, say, the Gators or the Seminoles (or Army vs. Navy if you are my friend, and West Point grad, Peter Tepper). Paul thinks it is perfectly acceptable to “boast” about God and his mercy and kindness towards us. “He is the source of your life in Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification and redemption, in order that, as it is written, ‘Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord’” (1 Corinthians 1:30-31). 

Not only that, Paul says, but when trials come, we can see in every challenge the promise of Spirit-worked character: “suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit which has been given to us” (Romans 5:3-5, RSV). It’s almost too much to take in. It is almost too much to remember. So, because it is so wonderfully—and gloriously—and truly—true, even our “boasting” becomes a way to remind ourselves of the worth of God’s love for us in Christ Jesus. Praise be. 

The Great “So What?” …and whoever wishes to be first among you must be your slave; just as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many. — Matthew 20:27. And just so, we can let go of the need to make ourselves Number One. Jesus gives a comprehensive and sobering description of the ultimately world-changing things that are about to happen in Jerusalem: his arrest, condemnation, mocking, flogging, crucifixion, and—incomprehensibly—his rising from the dead. 

Of all the possible reactions to that news, Matthew records this response: an overly ambitious mother lobbying to put her ambitious sons (see Luke 9:46) in the positions of highest honor when the Kingdom comes. At one level, it’s staggering to imagine such naked, selfish ambition right after they have heard the unhappy details of the awful things that were about to be done to Jesus. And yet, at another level, isn’t there a lot of that instinct in every single one of us? 

Perhaps, knowing this about his disciples (and about us), perhaps this is why Jesus calls the disciples to him. To.Spell.It.Out: “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them.  It will not be so among you; but whoever wishes to be great among you must be your servant,  and whoever wishes to be first among you must be your slave;  just as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.” Lord, have mercy. Give us grace this day to take our bearings from the Son of Man who “came not to be served but to serve.” 

Give us grace, we pray, to give thanks for the life that blossomed from the tree, and that continues to intercede for us.

Give us grace, we pray, to delight in the love you have shown us, Father, in the gift of your Son, and that you continue to pour into our hearts by the Holy Spirit (Romans 5:5). 

Give us grace, we pray, as simultaneously slaves of Christ and heirs of his kingdom, to attend not to our own needs this day, but to the needs of those around us. Amen.

Be blessed this day,

Reggie Kidd+

Grace Intervenes - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Wednesday • 6/26/2024 •

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 101; Psalm 109; Numbers 16:36-50; Romans 4:13-25; Matthew 20:1-16

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)

God “gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist.” With these words from his epistle to the Romans, Paul marvels at the fact that the gift of faith lifts Jews out of spiritual death and calls Gentiles out of spiritual nonexistence.

Death, Spiritual and Otherwise. The spiritual death of which Paul speaks is vividly displayed in today’s Numbers passage—and so is the summons from death to life. Instead of recognizing Yahweh’s perfect and righteous judgment against the sin of Korah, “the whole congregation of the Israelites” blame God’s punishment on Moses and Aaron. “You have killed the people of the Lord,” they claim. This rebellion of unbelief is nothing but the manifestation of an ultimately fatal underlying condition. Sin is a walking death—deserving of God’s wrath. God tells Moses, “Get away from this assembly so I can put an end to them at once.” When the glory cloud of Yahweh descends upon the people (who are already dead, spiritually) it has the effect of finishing the process. Thus, a plague breaks out. Over 14,000 people die, the physical death completing the end of their earthly existence.

Image: Pixabay

Grace Intervenes. But then—and herein lies the glory of the Bible: like a brilliant shaft of light in the dark, grace (unmerited favor), breaks into the story. Here’s where Israel’s narrative differs from the epics and the myths and the stories of ancient heroes, gods, and goddesses. Instead of letting dike or kharma or divine vengeance have its way, the Bible recounts a redeeming mediation. Interceding for the people at Yahweh’s anger, Moses and Aaron “fell on their faces.” Moses sends his brother Aaron the high priest with lit censer “into the middle of the assembly where the plague had already begun among the people.” There Aaron puts incense on the lit coals, and offers the smoke. Standing “between the dead and the living,” Aaron’s billowing smoke “made atonement for the people”—literally, “covered the people.” The sweet savor of the incense covered the stench of rebellion, of mistrust, of spiritual death. It brought the plague to a halt. The Bible is all about turning death into life, foul stench into fragrant aroma, enmity into amity. And the Bible proclaims this truth: believe Yahweh unto life, renounce rebellion unto death.

Christ as Fragrant Offering. In precisely these terms Paul calls his readers to believe “him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead, who was handed over to death for our trespasses and was raised for our justification.” Or, as he says in a later epistle, “Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God” (Ephesians 5:2). Under the Old Covenant, smoke of incense and of whole burnt offering rose upward in Israel’s sacrifices to cover—and thus, temporarily to atone for—the offensive stench and rottenness of sin. In the New Covenant, our Great High Priest places himself, first, in the midst of the congregation. Then, on the Cross, Christ our Mediator offers his own body and blood, bringing an end to the malodorous stench of sin-death and inaugurating the fragrance of life.

Grace in Response. Without going into the details of today’s Gospel reading, Matthew records the Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard to remind Jewish Christians (those who have labored all day in the vineyard) not to be envious when Gentile Christians (those who have only labored for the last hour the day) receive the same wage, a metaphor for the promise of life in the Kingdom of Heaven. In Paul’s terms, there is the grace of being raised from the dead (Jews becoming alive to their true inheritance through the coming of Christ as Messiah) and there is the grace of being called from non-being to being (Gentiles being brought from totally outside the sphere of God’s redemptive work). This parable is Matthew’s version of Luke’s Parable of the Prodigal Son. It’s a reminder to us not to envy grace given to others, but to be grateful for the grace that’s been lavished on us. Praise be to the God whose grace raises the dead and brings into being that which was not—and robs either side of any boast save one, “Let those who boast, boast in the Lord” (1 Corinthians 1:31).

Be blessed this day,

Reggie Kidd+

Trust in the Giver - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Tuesday • 6/25/2024 •

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 97; Psalm 99; Psalm 100; Numbers 16:20-35; Romans 4:1-12; Matthew 19:23-30

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) 

Although today’s readings present a range of situations, they unite in pressing one issue: trust. Trust is the question throughout this week’s readings. In fact, believing God is the most pressing of issues throughout the Bible.

Image: Pixabay

Romans. “Abraham believed God,” says Paul, in Romans 4:3, quoting Genesis 15:6. On its face, that seems to be an utterly simple statement. Yet it is profoundly complex. In the eyes of Paul the apostle, God’s promise of a numberless “seed” and a vast nation—the promise Abraham is credited with having believed all the way back in Genesis—turns out to be anything but simple. Millennia after the fact, Paul realizes that the promise that Abraham believed included a specific “Seed”—Jesus Christ—whose life, death, and resurrection have now brought forgiveness of sins for the whole world. Not only that, but Jesus brings the beginning of the undoing of the treasonous and ruinous unbelief of the Garden. Abraham’s simple decision to trust God has worked incalculable good. And Paul urges us toward a faith like that of Abraham, “the ancestor of all who believe without being circumcised and who thus have righteousness reckoned to them, and likewise the ancestor of the circumcised who are not only circumcised but who also follow the example of the faith that our ancestor Abraham had before he was circumcised” (Romans 4:11-12). In other words, Abraham is the ancestor of all who trust God, whether Gentile or Jew. 

Numbers. Korah and company’s fantasies about Egypt seem plausible to a congregation wearied of the wilderness’s hardships. Trusting God is something they just cannot do. At Korah’s challenge to their authority, Moses and Aaron beg Yahweh to limit punishment to the instigators of this rebellion of unbelief. So the congregation as a whole must choose whether to stand with the rebels and perish, or trust their appointed leaders, Moses and Aaron, and live. In today’s passage, they make a good choice. The people stand with Moses and Aaron. In tomorrow’s passage, they will revert to mistrust, accusing Moses and Aaron, “You have killed the people of the Lord.” 

In their turn, Moses and Aaron trust that their vindication lies not in power politics and clever maneuvering against their attackers, but in simply submitting to Yahweh’s power to sort the evil from the good. 

Matthew. For rich people, according to Jesus, the question is whether to trust the gifts or the Giver. Reflecting this very teaching, Paul will later urge Timothy to warn rich Christians not “to set their hopes on the uncertainty of riches, but rather on God who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment. They are to do good, to be rich in good works, generous, and ready to share, thus storing up for themselves the treasure of a good foundation for the future, so that they may take hold of the life that really is life” (1 Timothy 6:17-18). 

May you, like Abraham, trust God’s promise for peace with him now and a sure future to come through Jesus Christ.

May you, like Moses and Aaron, trust God even when you are weary from hardships or difficulties that discourage you. 

May you, at Jesus’s invitation, trust in the wealth that comes from knowing him. 

Be blessed this day, 

Reggie Kidd+

God's Gift of Unspeakable Grace - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Monday • 6/24/2024 •

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 89:1-18; Numbers 16:1-19; Romans 3:21-31; Matthew 19:13-22

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)

Throughout the book of Numbers, Moses prepares the 2nd generation to cross over into the Promised Land. Here in Proper 7 of the Daily Office, our lectionary has us in the middle portion of Numbers, a section that recounts a series of rebellions. These rebellions illustrate different aspects of the sinfulness of the human heart. This middle section of the Book of Numbers also offers a series of images of mediation, as Moses stands between the people and the consequences of their faithlessness.

Image: Pixabay

Breathtaking presumption. Korah’s and his followers’ claim that “all the congregation are holy, every one of them, and the Lord is among them” is partially correct, but mostly wrong. They are correct in that the Lord had indeed said that Israel would be “a kingdom of priests and a holy nation” (Exodus 19:6). They are correct in that the Lord dwells “in their midst” (Numbers 5:3). 

But Korah and company are more wrong than they are correct, because they fail to take into account how the congregation becomes holy. A sinful people are inherently unholy. In the first place, that means they must be shielded from the presence of the Holy One—thus, the permission for Moses alone to ascend the holy mountain back in Exodus 24. In the second place, that means their holiness must be established through God-ordained sacrifices (for instance, the Day of Atonement sacrifices in Leviticus 16, symbolizing purification for sin) and then maintained through God-instructed living (“You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy,” Leviticus 19:6). 

Breathtaking stupidity. Further, Korah and his followers are profoundly wrong to claim that Moses and Aaron “exalt yourselves above the assembly of the Lord” and “lord it over us” (Numbers 16:3, 13). At age 40, Moses had indeed taken it upon himself to deliver his people, when he killed the Egyptian—and had failed miserably (Exodus 2:11-14; Acts 7:23-29). For the next 40 years, he had tended his father-in-law’s sheep in obscurity. At 80 years of age the Lord had appeared to him in a burning bush and, over Moses’s protestations, had called him to this task (Exodus 3 & 4; Acts 7:30-36). Aaron was pressed into service because of Moses’s claim to inelegance of speech: “I am slow of speech and slow of tongue” (Exodus 4:10). And Numbers has already stated, “Now the man Moses was very humble, more so than anyone else on the face of the earth” (Numbers 12:3). Moses doesn’t have a “dog in this fight,” nor any “turf to defend.” He’s willing to let the Lord show how He wants to order leadership among the Israelites. Not to mention, Korah and his family—of the tribe of Levi—had already been set apart in service to Yahweh and his people! What??

Breathtaking remedy. Numbers is part of a whole history that proves, according to Paul in Romans 2–3:20), that Israel is just as sinful as the rest of the human race (Romans 1). Paul draws the lessons from Israel’s history (Romans 2–3) and adds it to his indictment of the rest of the human race (Romans 1). Paul’s summation is that, “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God…”. And that summation leads to perhaps the profoundest words he is ever to pen: “…they are now justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a sacrifice of atonement by his blood, effective through faith. He did this to show his righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over the sins previously committed; it was to prove at the present time that he himself is righteous and that he justifies the one who has faith in Jesus” (Romans 3:24-26). 

The tangled history of Israel has led to this singular Son, Jesus Christ, whose atoning sacrifice the heavenly Father would set forth to cover all the Korahs and all our rebellions. Here is God’s gift of unspeakable grace, in fulfillment of his promise to make right all that went wrong in the Garden, all that went wrong in the wilderness, and all that has gone wrong in the myriad of ways we continue to prove that “all have sinned and fallen short of the glory.” Through Christ, the God who keeps faith becomes “just and justifier.” All that is required is that his faithfulness be met with our own faith. As Romans 1:17 has already put it: “from (understood, his) faith to (understood, our) faith.” 

Be blessed this day,

Reggie Kidd+

Bread & Wine - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Friday • 6/21/2024 •

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

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

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

“Jesus Christ, Our Worship Leader,” Part Five of Five 

This week, we explore the way Jesus exquisitely leads worship in our midst: he prays for us, declares the Father’s name to us, sings over us in love, and brings us bread and wine from God’s holy heavenly altar.  

Bread & Wine 

In Christ the King Catholic Church in Mt. Pleasant, SC, there is a beautifully colored stained glass depiction of a man who is obviously from the biblical era. The picture includes a number of clues as to the figure’s identity: he bears a crown on his head and priestly vestments on his shoulders; he stands behind scales of justice and an olive branch of peace. What gives him away, though, is the cup and loaf he holds in his hands. It’s Melchizedek. The stained glass picks up on a detail in Genesis 14’s portrayal of Melchizedek that is easy to pass over, until you’ve really “seen” it. Melchizedek brings to Abram, according to Genesis 14:18, “bread and wine.”  

This verse is the first convergence of “bread and wine” in the Bible. Accordingly, ancient commentators and Christian artists through the centuries have found in that detail an irresistible invitation to ponder the Eucharist, the gift of bread and wine the New Testament’s greater Melchizedek provides his brothers and sisters.  

The entire redemptive project envisions, as Robert Stamps’s lovely hymn puts it, “God and man at table are sat down.” As a foretaste of Israel’s ultimate journey, seventy of her elders “eat and drink” in God’s presence on Mt. Sinai (Exod. 24:11). The Bible virtually ends with a wedding feast shared by Christ the Bridegroom and his church, the bride (Rev. 19:5-10).  

In the meantime, as the writer to the Hebrews puts it, “we have an altar from which those who serve the tent have no right to eat” (13:10), but from which we do have the right to eat. Every time Jesus’s people gather he is there, and one of his delights is to set the Table and feed us: “The body of Christ, the bread of heaven. The blood of Christ, the cup of salvation.”  

One of Jesus’s most shocking statements is also one that most vividly portrays the genius of Trinitarian worship. Jesus says that the master who returns to find his servants laboring “will gird himself and have them sit at table, and he will come and serve them” (Luke 12:38). Of course, in one sense, the master has yet to return, and will do so only at the end of time. But in another, he has already returned, having already defeated death and sin and Satan. He is among us to serve us at Table.   

When we receive “bread and wine” from the greater Melchizedek, worship gets transformed. It takes on that mysterious “grammar of grace” to which Torrance referred. Recall that after giving bread and wine and after blessing Abram, Melchizedek received from Abram a tithe (Gen 14:20; Heb. 7:4-10). Accordingly, after indicating we have the right to food from a better altar, the writer to the Hebrews says “through Jesus” we can offer better offerings — not mere tithes, but “a sacrifice of praise to God, that is the fruit of lips that acknowledge his name,” and the doing of good and the sharing of what we have, “for such sacrifices are pleasing to God” (13:15-16). 

Our task as worship leaders? Simple, if not easy. Give the platform to the real worship leader. Let him pray effectual prayers. Let him declare the Father’s blessing. Let him sing over his people in love. Let him set the most lavish of tables.  

Be blessed this day,  

Reggie Kidd+ 

Singing in Our Midst - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Thursday • 6/20/2024 •

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

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

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

“Jesus Christ, Our Worship Leader,” Part Four of Five 

This week, we explore the way Jesus exquisitely leads worship in our midst: he prays for us, declares the Father’s name to us, sings over us in love, and brings us bread and wine from God’s holy heavenly altar.  

Singing in Our Midst 

As our worship leader, Jesus prays and he declares. He also sings. “In the midst of the congregation I will sing a hymn to you,” concludes Heb. 2:12b. The same one who declares God’s name in blessing also leads the congregation in song.   

The writer is actually quoting Psalm 22:22, one in which David is recounting God’s miraculously delivering him from enemies who nearly killed him. The psalm starts out as a lament of abandonment, one of the darkest in all the Bible: “My God, my God, why have your forsaken me?” At the point of rescue, the psalm pivots and becomes a victory chant, celebrating among Jew and Gentile, poor and rich, already dead and not yet born, the righteous rule of God.  

It’s an extraordinary thing that the mightiest warrior of the Bible is also its most celebrated musician. He whose “hands are trained for war and fingers for battle” offers a new song to God: “Upon a harp of ten strings I will sing praises to you” (Ps 144:1,9). In his youth, David soothes Saul’s soul with his melodies. In his maturity, with harp in hand he confesses his sin, protests his innocence, humbles himself under God’s discipline, calls for help, composes “new songs” commemorating God’s fresh acts of deliverance.   

David passes on his legacy of song to members of the Levitical priestly line, to the likes of Chenaniah and Asaph (1 Chron. 15:22; 16:5). It is descendants of these Levites who would oversee Israel’s musical worship (see 2 Chron. 23:18; 35:15), even, at times, going before Israel’s army into battle (2 Chron. 20:14-25).  

But there is only one priestly order that could establish a permanently “new song,” only one director who could incorporate into a single choir people of every race and nation, tribe and tongue, bandwidth and skill-level, only one singer who could lead that menagerie into the fray against the powers and principalities: he who went all the way into the silence of sin-forsakenness and rose in victory to be God-incarnate singing over his people with love (Zeph. 3:17).  

The glory of song in worship is that we get to join our voices to his. His is the voice that counts, not ours.   

Be blessed this day,  

Reggie Kidd+ 

Declaring the Father's Name - Daily Devotions with the Dean (Copy)

Wednesday • 6/19/2024 •

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

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

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

“Jesus Christ, Our Worship Leader,” Part Three of Five 

This week, we explore the way Jesus exquisitely leads worship in our midst: he prays for us, declares the Father’s name to us, sings over us in love, and brings us bread and wine from God’s holy heavenly altar.  

Declaring the Father’s Name 

On the one hand, as our worship leader Jesus goes to the Father in our name. On the other, he comes to us in the Father’s name. The complement to what the writer to the Hebrews says about Jesus remembering us to the Father is what he says earlier, in chapter 2. There, the Risen Jesus shouts to his Father: “I will declare your name to my brothers” (v. 12a).  

While Israel’s high priest wore God’s people’s name on his chest, he bore the personal name of the Redeemer God, Yahweh, on his forehead: “Holy is Yahweh” (Exod. 28:36-38). In Numbers 6:26-27, Moses summarizes what the high priest is to do with Yahweh’s name: declare it in blessing. Three times the priest pronounces Yahweh’s name, calling upon him to bless, keep, make his face shine upon, be gracious to, lift up his countenance upon, and give peace to his people.   

But Israel’s Yahweh had never been just hers, and her blessings had never been just for herself. Already back in Genesis 14, the mysterious figure Melchizedek had appeared out of nowhere. He is king of Salem (the city that is eventually to be Jerusalem) and priest of El-Elyon, that is “God Most High” — a pagan designation of the God above all gods. Representing all the nations then, Melchizedek blesses Abram: “Blessed be Abram of El-Elyon, Creator of heaven and earth” (Gen. 14:19). Melchizedek declares that the God who had just given Abram victory over his kin’s captors is not a local, petty tribal deity, but Lord of the whole earth. Melchizedek confirms to Abram Yahweh’s promise that all the nations of the earth will be blessed through Abram (Gen. 12:3; see 14:22).  

Jesus comes to declare God’s name to us in blessing — exactly as he said he was doing in the so-called “High Priestly Prayer” in John 17: “I have made your name known to them, and I will make it known” (v. 26). As “mediator of a new covenant” Jesus shows God to be a Father who desires his children’s presence (Heb. 9:15; 12:24). As “merciful and faithful high priest” and as victor over death and the devil, Jesus proves God to be a Father who will tolerate no bondage for his children (Heb. 2:14-17). As “pioneer and perfecter of our faith” Jesus shows God to be “the Father of spirits” who lovingly shapes his children to bear his character (12:1-11). As “apostle and high priest of our confession” Jesus shows the intent of “the God of all” to fill the cosmos with a “festal gathering” of “the just made perfect” (3:1-2; 12:18-24).  

One of the great preachers of the 19th century was Boston’s Phillips Brooks. In our day, his hymn text “O Little Town of Bethlehem” keeps his memory alive. In his day, he was known for his preaching, as commemorated in a statue just outside the church he served in Boston, Trinity Church. The statue depicts Brooks standing next to a lectern that holds an open Bible, his hand lifted in blessing. Behind the lectern stands Jesus, his arm on Brooks’s shoulder.  

The statue reminds us that our job is to bless God’s people by declaring the Father’s name. When we do, we may, by the Holy Spirit, feel his Son’s kind, empowering hand on our shoulder. When we declare somebody else’s name — our own, our favorite team’s, our preferred political party’s — we may well feel a bit of a squeeze.    

Be blessed this day,  

Reggie Kidd+ 

Prayers for the Rescued - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Tuesday • 6/18/2024 •

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

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

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

“Jesus Christ, Our Worship Leader,” Part Two of Five 

This week, we explore the way Jesus exquisitely leads worship in our midst: he prays for us, declares the Father’s name to us, sings over us in love, and brings us bread and wine from God’s holy heavenly altar.  

Prayers for the Rescued 

Perhaps the first thing to notice about Jesus’s work as the church’s prime worship leader is what the writer says just before calling Jesus heaven’s Liturgist. “He holds his priesthood permanently, because he continues forever. Consequently, he is able for all time to save those who draw near to God through him, since he always lives to make intercession for them” (Heb. 7:24-25). 

On his breastplate Israel’s high priest bore the names of the tribes of Israel, those whom Yahweh had redeemed and called into relationship with himself (Exod. 28:29). What’s different about Jesus’s priestly ministry of prayer is that our names aren’t carved on some sort of accessory. As Isaiah put it so tantalizingly: “I have inscribed you on the palms of my hands” (Isa 49:16). Our names are written into Jesus’s flesh, into the very scars he bears for eternity in his side, his hands, his feet, and his brow.  

The writer to the Hebrews sums Jesus’s life up as one long series of “prayers and supplication, with loud cries and tears, to him who was able to save him out of (note: the Greek is not “from” but “out of”) death, and he was heard for his godly fear” (Heb. 5:7). His life was one long lesson in obedient prayer, even in that dark moment when he implored that perhaps there was another way, “Let this cup pass.” Happily, in the Garden the Father said, “No!” to his Son in order that now in heaven the Father can say, “Yes!” to his Son in our behalf.  

I remember the first time I experienced incense in worship. Immediately, I recalled the word picture in Revelation: the prayers of the saints and the incense mixing and rising into God’s presence (Rev. 8:3-4). The sweetness of the smell brought to mind Christ’s “fragrant offering and sacrifice” that qualifies us to stand righteous and pure before God’s throne (Eph. 5:2). I imagined Christ bringing those incense-laced prayers into the heavenly courts and mingling them there with the Glory Cloud, the depiction of God’s presence in the Old Testament. What a profound picture of our union with God by the Spirit through Christ’s prayer with, for, and in us! 

Hours later, I was driving one of my kids to an event on the other side of town, and I kept sensing a certain smell. It was vaguely familiar but maddeningly elusive. Suddenly, I remembered that I had not changed clothes after church. The smell of the incense had penetrated my shirt and pants, clinging to me long after the service was over. Heaven smells of us, because Jesus is there bringing our needs and burdens always before the Father. None of us, I realized, makes it through a moment of this life by virtue of our looks, our brains, our skills, or our likability. We make it because we have a friend in a high place, who “always lives to make intercession.”  

Be blessed this day,  

Reggie Kidd+ 

A New Kind of Priest - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Monday • 6/17/2024 •

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

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

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

“Jesus Christ, Our Worship Leader,” Part One of Five 

The late Scottish theologian James Torrance often recounted his conversation with a man who had lost his faith and was facing his wife’s imminent death to cancer. “I’ve been trying to pray, but I can’t,” lamented the man, broken and ashamed.  

“I can’t tell you ‘how’ to pray, friend. But I can point you to the ‘who’ of prayer,” was the effect of Torrance’s reply. Torrance reminded the man that Jesus promised Peter he would pray for him even through Peter’s denial (Luke 22:31). In fact, Jesus returned from the dead to restore their relationship (John 21:15-24). Paul the apostle, Torrance explained, acknowledged that we don’t know how to pray, which is precisely why the Father set his risen Son at his own right hand to intercede for us, and placed his Holy Spirit within us to do the same (Rom. 8:26,34). Jesus, even now, said Torrance, “is praying for you … and with you and in you.”  

Soon after that conversation, Torrance had the opportunity to introduce both the man and his wife to what he calls the Trinity’s “grammar of grace”: Our “Father … has given us Christ and the Spirit to draw us to himself in prayer.” At the heart of that grammar is the priesthood of Jesus Christ: “our great high priest, touched with a feeling of our infirmities, interceding (to the Father) for us, opening our hearts by the Spirit.”  

As with prayer, so with worship: the “how” is not as important as the “who.” Torrance challenged a generation of theology students to repent of “Unitarian” worship and embrace “Trinitarian” worship. According to Torrance, you know your worship is Unitarian (even if you label it Christian) if your worship is about various techniques of experiencing God on your own. You know your worship is Trinitarian if your worship is about Jesus, your elder brother and great high priest, drawing you into the eternal communion of love that has always characterized God’s own life as Loving Father, Beloved Son, and Holy Spirit, who is love itself.  

I’ve led worship long enough to know the lure of technique-obsessed, Unitarian worship. I’ve seen it practiced over and over again. Along the way, I have learned to look for a different way, and to know the surprise and delight of the Trinity’s “grammar of grace,” where Jesus is our true worship leader.  

A New Kind of Priest 

We are not the first generation to have to figure out how to move from Unitarian to Trinitarian worship. The anonymous writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews helped a first-century Jewish congregation see how monumental the shift is from an old way of worship to a new, where the Son is worthy of worship alongside the Father (Heb. 1:3,8,10-12; 13:8), as is the Holy Spirit (Heb. 6:4; 10:29).  

Of particular concern to the writer to the Hebrews, though, is the special nature of Jesus’s role as priest in representing us to the Father and the Father to us. Jesus is the unique God-Man priest “in the order of Melchizedek,” whose priesthood is eternal and whose once-for-all self-offering brought a redemption and forgiveness that is complete and needs no augmentation. Jesus is a priest whose work is done, in one sense. He sits at the right hand of the Father because he does not have to make any further offerings. By his sacrifice, Jesus has assured God’s satisfaction in us, and has cleansed our consciences. We don’t have to worry about guilt or death any longer.  

But in another sense, Jesus’s priesthood goes into overdrive when his sacrificial work is completed. Now he serves as “Liturgist (Gk: leitourgos) in the sanctuary and the true tent which is set up not by man but by the Lord” (Heb. 8:2).  

Throughout his brilliant letter, the writer carefully unpacks different elements of Jesus’s ongoing liturgical leadership. They couldn’t be more relevant to what we do when we worship.  

Through the rest of this week, we explore the way Jesus exquisitely leads worship in our midst: he prays for us, declares the Father’s name to us, sings over us in love, and brings us bread and wine from God’s holy heavenly altar. 

Be blessed this day, 

Reggie Kidd+  

A Campaign Only Love Can Win - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Friday • 6/14/2024 •

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

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

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

“A Campaign Only Love Can Win” 

“Music is a universal phenomenon but not a universal language,” maintains ethnomusicologist Robin Harris. So true. Jake and Elwood Blues (The Blues Brothers, 1980) might not have made it out of Bob’s Country Bunker alive if they had not figured out the local language was “Theme from Rawhide,” not “Gimme Some Lovin’.”  

Image: Cover art, Blues Brothers DVD 

Sometimes it’s not that easy. Once, some friends and I never got past a group’s stony silence with our songs. Another friend had asked us to come and lead worship. He thought our stuff was cool and he thought his group would think so too. Wrong! Unfortunately, unlike the Blues Brothers, we didn’t have a wide enough repertoire to adjust to the situation. It was a night to remember.   

What does it take to learn somebody’s “heart language” of music? It takes learning their heart. It takes the singular language of love that Christ’s followers learn from the one they follow.    

Singing Is Not the Only Worship 

The Christian faith was born in the Middle East — born unwelcomed, born in controversy. It established itself largely through its irrepressible love. “Look … how they love one another!” complained unbelievers about Christ’s followers, according to the North African theologian Tertullian around A.D. 197/198. That love, observed modern historian E. R. Dodds, was “a major cause, perhaps the strongest single cause, of the spread of Christianity.”  

Nearly 2,000 years later, nothing’s changed.  

A friend of mine — call her Margie — ministers frequently in Tertullian’s part of the world. Hers is not a ministry of music, but she has a lot to teach those of us who think worship is just about the music. On a recent trip she had been asked to bring a teaching for women in ministry: 

I really struggled with what I should share with the women.  I had prepared two messages, but neither seemed appropriate.  During my restless night before my scheduled time to speak it seemed that Jesus clearly spoke to me saying, ”Wash their feet.” But where would I find the basins and towels?  I shared my desire with a servant leader and within a few hours everything appeared in our “upper room.” 

I modeled the process with a dear sister who serves in a highly restrictive country. In humbleness I knelt before her and while washing her feet I quoted verses of encouragement and prayed for her as I finished. We traded places. The Spirit’s presence was very evident as we clung to one another in love and tears. Other ladies came and filled the chairs and washed each other’s feet. There were many tears, but much joy.   

One missionary wanted to wash others’ feet but did not allow someone to wash hers. That night when she shared with her husband, he knelt down and washed her feet. Another wanted to have her feet washed for her team member who was not at the conference. When she returned to her country of service, she washed her feet. One of the gifts we had taken for the ladies were bedroom slippers — not knowing that we would be washing their feet.  

When the ladies shared their experience with their husbands the vision caught and spread. In fact, when the elders from that country visited the church leaders in yet another restrictive country — one where there is military conflict and where the gospel is just struggling to regain a foothold — they knelt and washed their brothers’ feet. Once again, the humbling, healing service was blessed.  

It was as though the Lord were anointing an army of footwashers, to wage a campaign only love can win.  

The way of love is the way of immersion. It’s the way of observation. It’s the way of listening. It’s a way that Margie had learned over time. If she had been a musician, she wouldn’t have needed beer bottles flying through chicken wire à la The Blues Brothers to get her attention. Nor would she have encountered stony silence from people who found her music alien.  

She loved — she simply loved. Then when she finally made her offering, its recipients made it their own and found a way to multiply it.  

Be blessed this day,  

Reggie Kidd+