Conquering King - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Monday • 4/21/2025 •
Easter Week  

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 93; Psalm 98; Jonah 2:1–9; Acts 2:22–32; John 14:1–14  

This morning’s Canticles are: following the OT reading, Pascha Nostrum (“Christ Our Passover,” BCP, p. 83); following the Epistle reading, Canticle 19 (“The Song of the Redeemed,” Revelation 15:3–4, BCP, p. 94) 

Welcome to Daily Office Devotions, where every Monday through Friday we explore that day’s Scripture readings, as given in the Book of Common Prayer. I’m Reggie Kidd. Thanks for joining me. This is Monday of Easter Week, and we are in Year 1 of the Daily Office Lectionary. “Alleluia! Christ is risen! The Lord is risen indeed! Alleluia!” 

Here we are on Easter Monday, and Psalm 98 invites us to, “Sing to the Lord a new song, for he has done marvelous things” (Psalm 98:1). For me, the memory of Good Friday’s reading of Psalm 22 is still fresh, with its forecast of Jesus’s lament upon the cross: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Psalm 22:1). 

On that first Good Friday, I don’t suppose there was anybody on the scene who could have anticipated that day would be remembered as “good”— except perhaps the soldiers who won a scrap of clothing, or Barabbas who was spared the gibbet. On that first Good Friday, I doubt that Psalm 98’s “Sing to the Lord a new song, for he has done marvelous things,” could possibly have come to anybody’s mind either.  

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

Except for one person. The person who began the lament, “My God, my God….” As a practicing Jew, Jesus would have known that psalm turns a corner: “You have answered Me. I will declare Your name to My brothers and sisters; In the midst of the assembly I will sing a hymn to You” (Psalm 22:21c–22, my edit of NKJV). Even as he resigned himself to taking the curse of sin and death to himself, Jesus knew things would not end in abandonment, but in vindication. Not in curse, but in blessing. He would go away as condemned criminal, only to return as conquering King. He could sing the lament of abandonment because he knew he would rise to sing the chant of victory.  

And so, Psalm 98 is altogether fitting for us to read and sing and chant this Easter Monday.  

Jesus’s resurrection brings God’s victory over sin and death and error. “With his right hand and his holy arm has he won for himself the victory” (Psalm 98:2). At the exodus, Yahweh’s mighty and victorious arm cast Pharaoh’s army into the sea. Similarly, the power of Christ’s resurrection has “brought us out of error into truth, out of sin into righteousness, out of death into life” (BCP, p. 368).  

Jesus’s resurrection means God’s righteousness for the nations and his mercy and faithfulness to Israel. “…[H]is righteousness has he openly shown in 
the sight of the nations. He remembers his mercy and faithfulness to the house of Israel…” (Psalm 98:3b–4a). Christ rises as (to use Paul’s language) “the Last Adam” or “the Second Man” (1 Corinthians 15:45,47). With Christ’s resurrection, God reasserts his righteous and just claim over all humanity, not just over one chosen nation. At the same time, Christ’s resurrection as Israel’s one true and faithful Son, means mercy for Israel, the rebellious people of Yahweh’s favor.  

Jesus’s resurrection means joy. “Shout with joy to the Lord,” enjoins Psalm 98:5. The Easter Vigil’s centerpiece song “The Exsultet” radiates such joy: “Rejoice now, heavenly hosts and choirs of angels … Rejoice and sing now, all the round earth … Rejoice and be glad now, Mother Church.” That joy is rooted in Jesus’s resurrection, where “wickedness is put to flight, and sin is washed away.” There is restoration of “innocence to the fallen, and joy to those who mourn” (BCP, pp. 286,287). There is no sadness we carry that has not been shared by the Man of Sorrows. Likewise, by virtue of his rising, there’s no gloom his presence cannot dispel.  

Jesus’ resurrection prompts the engagement of all creation in full-throated praise of God. “Sing to the Lord with the harp, with the harp and the voice of song. With trumpets and the sound of the horn … Let the sea make a noise and all that dwell in it…” (Psalm 98:6,7,8). As Psalm 98’s sister psalms put it, there is a beauty to God’s holiness, and there’s an adorning of that holiness to which we are called (Psalm 96:9; 93:6). Whether we sing beautifully or off-pitch, whether we play a musical instrument or just hum with the radio—regardless, we orchestrate creation’s praise. It is a glorious calling. I pray we know much joy and wonder, pleasure and awe, in its pursuit throughout this Eastertide. 

Collect for Monday in Easter Week. Grant, we pray, Almighty God, that we who celebrate with awe the Paschal feast may be found worthy to attain to everlasting joys; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen. 

Be blessed this day,  

Reggie Kidd+ 

Look For God's Easter Eggs - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Friday • 4/18/2025 •
Good Friday 

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 22; Genesis 22:1–14; 1 Peter 2:10–20; John 13:36–38 

This morning’s Canticles are: following the OT reading, Canticle 10 (“The Second Song of Isaiah,” Isaiah 55:6–11; BCP, p. 86); following the Epistle reading, Canticle 18 (“A Song to the Lamb,” Revelation 4:11; 5:9–10, 13, BCP, p. 93) 

Welcome to Daily Office Devotions, where every Monday through Friday we bring to our lives that day’s Scripture readings, as given in the Book of Common Prayer. I’m Reggie Kidd, and I’m grateful to be with you this Good Friday.   

Genesis 22. There’s something unthinkable about the story of Abraham’s nearly sacrificing Isaac — unless its significance is to point beyond itself. Yahweh commands something that, on the face of it, is both inherently evil and abortive of his promise to his servant Abraham of “a seed.”  

And yet, on Mt. Moriah an angel speaks and stays the executioner’s hand. By contrast, on Mt. Calvary, the angels are mute as heaven’s lights go out and the executioners complete their grim work. On Mt. Moriah, a ram is offered as substitute for the favored son. On Mt. Calvary, the substitute is the favored Son. As the apostle Paul says, “He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, will he not also give us all things with him?” (Romans 8:32).  

It turns out that Genesis 22 is one of the many “Easter eggs” (see below) that God plants in his Bible to prepare us for the mystery of Good Friday. The evil miscarriage of justice committed against God’s Son that first Good Friday turns out to be the salvation of the world.  

Image: From the 14th century Icelandic manuscript AM 277 fol., now in the care of the Árni Magnússon Institute in Iceland. Public Domain. 

Similarly, Psalm 22 anticipates, by a thousand years, Jesus descending into the abyss of abandonment to death (“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”), so he can rise to lead the praise of the God who rescues those “that fear him … the poor in their poverty … those who worship him … all the families of the earth … all who go down to the dust … [and] … a people yet unborn” (Psalm 22:1, 22, 23, 24, 26, 28, 30).  

It seems fitting to reprise some observations from last year’s Good Friday Devotional based on the 1 Peter reading:  

…the Spirit of Christ…testified in advance to the sufferings destined for Christ and the subsequent glory. — 1 Peter 1:11. Holy Week prompts me to remember the many Old Testament Scriptures that pointed to the life and saving work of Jesus Christ long before his appearance on earth. On the Emmaus road after his resurrection, Jesus explained to two disciples “the things about himself in all the scriptures” (Luke 24:27). I’m reminded of how movie directors charm audiences by embedding “Easter eggs” inside their films. You can find Alfred Hitchcock appearing momentarily in his films, and similarly, Stan Lee in the Marvel Comic Universe movies, for example. You’ll find images of Star Wars’ R2-D2 and C-3PO in the hieroglyphics of a pillar in Raiders of the Lost Ark. Look closer, the directors say.  

Peter tells us angels have been looking closer for a long time. His sweeping statement about the advance notice of Christ’s suffering and glory in the Old Testament invites us, too, to look and find God’s Easter eggs hidden throughout his Word:  

The Seed who will strike the Serpent’s head, despite suffering a bruised heel (Genesis 3). 

Escape from a storm of judgment in an ark built by the One Righteous Man, with a new start signaled by a rainbow (Genesis 6-9). 

The sparing of a beloved son by the substitution of a ram (Genesis 22). 

A snake lifted up on a tree for the healing of people snake-bit by the power of sin (Numbers 21).   

After three days and three nights in the belly of “a great fish,” deliverance unto life, and the renewal of a call to prophetic ministry (the whole book of Jonah).  

So, despite everything—Judas’s betrayal, Peter’s (and my own) denial, the whimsicality and the vitriol of the crowds, the obscene injustice of religious and political authorities—Good Friday is good because it marks the pivot point in the long epic of God’s unspeakable love and unstoppable plan. Because of Good Friday, the song at the Great Vigil can ring out in praise of the God who “casts out pride and hatred, and brings peace and concord,” joining earth and heaven, and God and humankind.  

Collect for Good Friday. Almighty God, whose most dear Son went not up to joy but first he suffered pain, and entered not into glory before he was crucified: Mercifully grant that we, walking in the way of the cross, may find it none other than the way of life and peace; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord. Amen. 

Be blessed this Good Friday,  

Reggie Kidd+ 

Washing the Feet - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Thursday • 4/17/2025 •
Maundy Thursday 

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 102; Jeremiah 20:7–11; 1 Corinthians 10:14–17; 11:27–32; John 17:1–11(12–26) 

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

Welcome to Daily Office Devotions, where every Monday through Friday we consider some aspect of that day’s Scripture readings, as given in the Book of Common Prayer. I’m Reggie Kidd, and I’m grateful to be with you.  

Today is Maundy Thursday, a day that invites contemplation of the significance of the Table at which Jesus issues the mandate (thus, “Maundy”) that we love one another.  

According to the great twentieth century New Testament scholar Oscar Cullmann, John’s Gospel provides three angles of vision on the Eucharist.  

First, the Eucharist portrays atonement. Vessels for purification by water become vessels prefiguring blood for atonement (John 2). The wine of a Galilean wedding feast prefigures the wine of the eschatological wedding feast of the Lamb and his Bride the Church (Revelation 19). 

Second, the Eucharist is manna from heaven. Jesus is Bread from Heaven, and the Eucharist is the life-giving nourishment that the resurrected and ascended Jesus gives to his people on their journey through life (John 6).  

Third, the Eucharist is a fellowship of love. By depicting Jesus washing his disciples’ feet (John 13), John paints an amazing portrait of the Table as a place where we experience love. “Having loved his own while he was in the world, he loved them to the end,” in illustration of which, Jesus takes off his outer garment, wraps himself with a servant’s towel, and takes up a basin. The foot washing becomes a profound parable of the whole project of incarnation: love stoops to conquer. As Paul puts it in Philippians 2, he who was, and is equal with God, humbles himself in the most profound service to humankind; and in the end is exalted to receive the name that is above every name. The towel and the basin paint a mini-tableau of the whole redemptive drama of God’s love for us. 

Jesus’s “High Priestly Prayer.” Jesus rises from washing the feet of the disciples, and says (I paraphrase), “What I’ve done for you, you’re to do for one another. A new commandment I give to you: love one another. That’s how the world will know you’re my disciples” (John 13:34–35). And then after three chapters of teaching about various dimensions of being his disciple (John 14–16, a section which we will read in the first two weeks of Easter), Jesus prays in chapter 17. This prayer, often referred to as Jesus’s “High Priestly Prayer,” is the crowning event of their time at the Table. At the heart of Jesus’s prayer for his disciples is this (again, I paraphrase): “Father make them one as you and I are one, so that the world may know that I am in you and you are in me. May the world see our love for one another in their love for one another.”  

Jesus stakes his reputation, his Father’s reputation, and indeed the credibility of the gospel on one thing. It’s not the cleverness of our arguments. It’s not the sophistication of our apologetic. It’s not the slickness of our marketing. It’s not the beauty of our music or our architecture. It’s our love for one another.  

It’s interesting to observe that, for Paul, washing the feet of the saints becomes a shorthand for a lifestyle of meeting the needs of others. Think of 1 Timothy 5:10. When Paul lists qualifications for what he calls “enrolled widows,” the phrase washing the feet of the saints stands between “receiving strangers” and “relieving the afflicted.” To be sure, the objects of service are different: strangers, saints, and the afflicted, but the same attitude is expressed toward all. A spirit of humble self-giving. That’s part of what we learn at this Table. 

Discerning the body. And that, dear reader, is what Paul means when, in 1 Corinthians 11:29, he warns us not to come to the Table “without discerning the body.” What he means is that we must “discern Christ’s body” at the Table in this sense: we must recognize that Christ indwells those with whom we partake of this meal. His body is made up of all the people who are shoulder to shoulder with us there: the strangers, the saints, the afflicted, the widows and orphans, the people with whom we agree, and the people with whom we disagree. To come to the Table with a sense of independent pride or a feeling of spiritual or social superiority to anybody else there—that is what it is to come “in an unworthy manner.”  

Let me say this clearly and pointedly: you are not coming “in an unworthy manner” if you feel like you are an unworthy sinner; we are all—all of us—precisely that! The Table is a place to experience a fellowship of love. Jesus wraps himself with a servant’s towel and washes the feet of all his disciples, from John the beloved to Peter the impetuous … and, yes, even to Judas the betrayer. He loved each of them … he loves you and me … and he loves every other person at his Table.  

Collect for Maundy Thursday. Almighty Father, whose dear Son, on the night before he suffered, instituted the Sacrament of his Body and Blood: Mercifully grant that we may receive it thankfully in remembrance of Jesus Christ our Lord, who in these holy mysteries gives us a pledge of eternal life; and who now lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen. 

Be blessed this day,  

Reggie Kidd+  

Trust in the Father - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Wednesday • 4/16/2025 •
Holy Week 

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 55; Jeremiah 17:5–10,14–17; Philippians 4:1–13; John 12:27–36 

This morning’s Canticles are: following the OT reading, Canticle 11 (“The Third Song of Isaiah,” Isaiah 60:1–3,11a,14c,18–19, BCP, p. 87); following the Epistle reading, Canticle 16 (“The Song of Zechariah,” Luke 1:68–79, BCP, p. 92) 

Welcome to Daily Office Devotions, where every Monday through Friday we ask how God might direct our lives from that day’s Scripture readings, as given in the Book of Common Prayer. I’m Reggie Kidd, and I’m grateful to be with you this Wednesday of Holy Week. We are in Year 1 of the Daily Office Lectionary. 

There’s little worse in life than being betrayed by someone you thought was a friend. All the honest things you’ve told them about yourself, truths you’d only tell someone you trust implicitly, now they are ammunition in the hands of an enemy. There’s the question now about your own ability to gauge friendship: “What did I miss? What’s wrong with me? Can I trust myself to trust anyone?”  

In Psalm 55, we find that King David has had this experience, although scholars are unsure of exactly which event this psalm describes. The betrayal of a friend has led to a conspiracy taking over the city of Jerusalem (Psalm 55:11–12). David’s first instinct is to pray. Therein lies his greatness. And his gift to us is that he writes his prayer down.  

Image: From "Betrayal" by vidalia_11 is licensed under CC BY 2.0  

An even greater gift is the way David’s own experience turns out to provide us an advance view of our Savior’s experience. As often in David’s psalms, when he opens his heart to Yahweh about his troubles, he provides an anticipatory glimpse into the experience of Jesus Christ, the true Son of David who was to come a thousand years later. This Holy Week, I find myself noticing several features of Jesus’s life in David’s prayer about friendship betrayed. 

Betrayal hurts (Psalm 55:13–14,21–23). Jesus Christ is not untouched by any grief we bear. He has known what it is to have a close companion offer “speech [that] is softer than butter, but war is in his heart. His words are smoother than oil, but they are drawn swords” (Psalm 55:22–23). Jesus had entrusted the disciples’ finances to someone he had treated as a “familiar friend,” and with whom he “took sweet counsel” … and worshiped together “in the house of God” (Psalm 55:14,15). When betrayal leaves us alone and abandoned, we can know we are not truly alone and abandoned. Jesus is right there with us, a “man of sorrows and acquainted with our griefs” (Isaiah 53:3).  

Jesus could have prayed for escape, but didn’t (Psalm 55:7–9). David imagines himself escaping with “wings like a dove.” Running away to the desert where he doesn’t have to deal with people. Finding rest and shelter in a far-off place, protected from storm and tempest (Psalm 55:7). Similarly, for a brief moment in the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus wonders if there might be another way to accomplish his task. He asks that the cup of death’s judgment might pass from him. But he submits: “Not my will, but Thine be done.” Happily, over the course of his life, Jesus’s deeper prayer to be delivered “out of death” has prepared him for his cross and vindication (Hebrews 5:7). Praise be!  

Jesus could have called down judgment, but didn’t (Psalm 55:10,16, 25–26a.) Understandably, David calls upon God: “Swallow them up, O Lord,” and predicts his enemies will be brought “down to the pit of destruction” (Psalm 55:10,25). What makes Jesus our Savior (and David’s) is that while his ancestor David prays for God to ruin the betrayer and the enemies who have come against him, Jesus responds and prays differently. He expresses nothing but sorrow for his betrayer: “It would have been better for that man not to have been born” (Mark 14:21). And he asks the Father to forgive those who scourge him, mock him, and nail him to the cross: “Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing” (Luke 23:34). Thanks be, especially since, if we are honest with ourselves, we know we belong as much with the betrayer as with the betrayed.  

Jesus took his pain to his Father (Psalm 55:18). “In the evening, in the morning, and at noonday, I will complain and lament, and he will hear my voice.” David is saying pretty much: “All day long, I bring my just cause and my grief to you, Father.” The New Testament is as candid about Jesus’s own emotions before God. Our authors aren’t embarrassed about the passion that leads Jesus to whip the moneychangers, the vituperation he pours out on phony faith, his grief for the daughters of Jerusalem who will go through the Roman destruction of Jerusalem, the tears he sheds at the grief of Lazarus’s mourners, the “loud cries and tears” he lifts up over the course of his life, or his anguish in the Garden of Gethsemane (when you have time, check this long list of references: John 2:17; Matthew 23:13–39; Luke 23:28; John 11:35; Hebrews 5:7; Mark 14:32–50). The New Testament writers attribute to Jesus a blunt and raw honesty before God. He knows his Father cares about what is on his heart. That’s good news for us: our blunt and raw honesty won’t push our Heavenly Father away from us either.  

Jesus trusted his Father for deliverance (Psalm 55:17,24,26b). David can acknowledge all of the gritty things in Psalm 55—his hurt over a friend’s betrayal, his wish that he could just fly away from it all, his desire for vengeance, and his pain —because, at bottom, he knows his Father’s love for him. In spite of the betrayal and ugliness which follows for Jesus, he, too, knows his Father’s  love for him (and for us). He is confident of his Father’s determination to see deliverance all the way through, for him (and for us). “But I will trust in you.” 

Collect for Wednesday in Holy Week. Lord God, whose blessed Son our Savior gave his body to be whipped and his face to be spit upon: Give us grace to accept joyfully the sufferings of the present time, confident of the glory that shall be revealed; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen. 

Be blessed this day, 

Reggie Kidd+ 

No Longer Lost and Alone - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Tuesday • 4/15/2025 •
Holy Week  

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 6; Psalm 12; Jeremiah 15:10–21; Philippians 3:15–21; John 12:20–26 

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

Welcome to Daily Office Devotions, where every Monday through Friday we draw insights from that day’s Scripture readings, as given in the Book of Common Prayer. I’m Reggie Kidd, and I’m grateful to be with you. This is Tuesday of Holy Week, and we are in Year 1 of the Daily Office Lectionary.   

Jeremiah prefigures our Savior. There are subtle ways in which the prophet Jeremiah prefigures the sufferings of our Savior. It was clear from the start of Jeremiah’s ministry that he would face resistance and rejection. As a youth, he had been told by Yahweh: “Now I have put my words in your mouth. See, today I appoint you over nations and over kingdoms, to pluck up and to pull down, to destroy and to overthrow, to build and to plant” (Jeremiah 1:10). Jeremiah would be, like Dante, “a party of one,” or like Lincoln, “a majority of one.” He would “sit alone” in his prophecies against the majority opinion of his day (Jeremiah 15:17). And, like Jesus, he would come to his own people, only to be treated like a stranger (compare John 1:10–11). 

Nonetheless, Jeremiah, like Jesus, would so internalize God’s words that they, and they alone, would be sustenance and joy to him: “Your words were found, and I ate them, and your words became to me a joy and the delight of my heart; for I am called by your name, O Lord, God of hosts” (Jeremiah 15:16). In this, Jeremiah was like Jesus, who said his food was to do his Father’s will (John 4:34), and who also said we were made to live not by bread alone but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God (Matthew 4:4).  

A sinner just like the rest of the people to whom he prophesies, Jeremiah must go into exile with them. Even there, God will deliver him from his opponents, and God’s Word will sustain him as he continues his lonely mission of proclaiming truth in the face of error (Jeremiah 15:19–21; 43–44). Simultaneously sinner and saint, alone and in solidarity with fellow sinners, Jeremiah foreshadows a greater prophet. Jesus, that greater prophet, would be like us in every way, save sin. Jesus would be with us as sin-bearer, and at the same time he would be alone in resisting sin’s lure to the end.   

Image: "110908-A-NR754-002" by USAJFKSWCS is licensed under CC BY-ND 2.0 

John—Jesus suffers alone, but not alone. While Jesus suffers alone, like “a grain of wheat that falls into the ground,” he does so in order that he will not be merely “a single grain.” For by his death, Jesus “bears much fruit” (John 12:24). It is, after all, the inquiry of “some Greeks” that has prompted Jesus to exclaim at last: “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified” (John 12:23—compare with the “not yets” of John 2:4; 7:6,8,30). When he is lifted up on the cross, he will say, in tomorrow’s passage in John, “I will draw all people to myself” (John 12:32).  

Life can be messy. We can feel alone at work. We can feel alone with our sins. We can feel alone, without family. We can feel alone, without friends. It can feel like a kind of dying. Jesus, too, experienced aloneness, pain, and suffering on the cross. He understands anguish. We can thus feel God himself accompanying us in our aloneness, our sense of dying. And in that sharing we can see to the other side, to the gift of a resurrection-life of abundance and companionship.  

Philippians—independent, yet belonging. There is a splendor to Paul’s letter to the Philippians (most of whom are, like those who approach Jesus in John 12, Gentiles). In this letter, Paul unpacks what it is to be independent of anybody else’s assessment of personal worth, and yet at the same time what it is to be part of a great new “commonwealth” or “citizenship” (Philippians 3:29—the Greek is politeuma).  

One thing to keep in mind during Holy Week is that the loneliness of Good Friday’s cross yields to the fellowship of Easter Sunday. Jesus, indeed, as the old hymn puts it, “walked this lonesome valley, he had to walk it by himself.” But with his rising, he brings, not only us, but a great company of others, with him. Once dead, we are made alive: our resurrection begins because of his resurrection. Once feeling friendless, we have the dearest and best of friends: God himself, in the person of Jesus. Once lost and alone, we have a destination and companions on the journey: the Body of Christ.    

Collect for Tuesday in Holy Week. O God, by the passion of your blessed Son you made an instrument of shameful death to be for us the means of life: Grant us so to glory in the cross of Christ, that we may gladly suffer shame and loss for the sake of your Son our Savior Jesus Christ; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen. 

Be blessed this day,  

Reggie Kidd+  

The Weeping Prophet - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Monday • 4/14/2025 •
Holy Week  

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 51:1–18(19–20); Jeremiah 12:1–16; Philippians 3:1-14; John 12:9–19 

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

Welcome to Daily Office Devotions, where every Monday through Friday we explore that day’s Scripture readings, as given in the Book of Common Prayer. I’m Reggie Kidd. Thanks for joining me. This is Monday of Holy Week, and we are in Year 1 of the Daily Office Lectionary. 

Jeremiah’s life and ministry plunge us into a vortex of confusion. Guilty people prosper. “The beloved of [God’s[ own heart” are given over “into the hands of her enemies.” God forsakes his own house. God’s “pleasant portion” is made into “a desolate wilderness” (Jeremiah 12:1,7,10). No wonder Jeremiah is called “the weeping prophet.” No wonder portraits envision him looking out over a barren and depressing landscape.  

Image:  Ilya Repin: Cry of prophet Jeremiah on the Ruins of Jerusalem    http://www.art-catalog.ru/picture.php?id_picture=11437Wikimedia. Public Domain. 

And still, for Jeremiah, God’s promises stand: “I will again have compassion on them, and I will bring them again to their heritage, and to their land, every one of them.” (Jeremiah 12:15).  

Philippians. Paul’s life and ministry confront us with the existential discovery that all our credentials are worthless skubala (the Greek language’s own “s” word for excrement!—Philippians 3:8). Pedigree, education, exactness in theology, correctness and righteousness of political and ethical cause (Philippians 3:4–8)—all of it, as Jesus says in another context, is like “whatever goes into the mouth, enters the stomach, and then passes into the latrine” (Matthew 15:17 New American Bible). According to Paul, it’s all a bunch of skubala!  

Paul can muster up raw self-renunciation like this because the loss of these markers of identity and importance have, for him, yielded to “the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord” (Philippians 3:8). Paul realizes there is no “righteousness of my own” that can be established, buttressed, or maintained by all the credentialing in the world (Philippians 3:9). Instead, Paul discovers, to his wondrous amazement, that there is a credentialing “that comes by way of Christ’s faithfulness—a righteousness from God that is in fact based on Christ’s faithfulness” (Philippians 3:9 New English Translation).  

John. May we appreciate that first Palm Sunday for what it is: the humble King presents himself for his Passion. God’s own dear Son rides into Jerusalem, where he will bring down on himself all the desolation we deserve at the hand of God, and all the rejection. Our pretense to self-credentialing merits God’s rejection, which Jesus will experience in our place. Out of sheer love, he comes to endure, on our behalf, the skubala-storm of God’s wrath against sin. By Jesus’s Passion, desolation becomes heritage, wrath becomes joy, and self-pride is replaced by a grateful “pressing on toward the prize of the heavenly call” (Philippians 3:14).   

Collect for Monday in Holy Week. Almighty God, whose most dear Son went not up to joy but first he suffered pain, and entered not into glory before he was crucified: Mercifully grant that we, walking in the way of the cross, may find it none other than the way of life and peace; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen. 

Be blessed this day,  

Reggie Kidd+ 

Fragrance of Worship - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Friday • 4/11/2025 •
Week of 5 Lent 

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 22; Jeremiah 29:1,4–13; Romans 11:13–24; John 12:1–10 

This morning’s Canticles are: following the OT reading, Canticle 10 (“The Second Song of Isaiah,” Isaiah 55:6–11; BCP, p. 86); following the Epistle reading, Canticle 18 (“A Song to the Lamb,” Revelation 4:11; 5:9–10, 13, BCP, p. 93) 

Welcome to Daily Office Devotions, where every Monday through Friday we bring to our lives that day’s Scripture readings, as given in the Book of Common Prayer. I’m Reggie Kidd, and I’m grateful to be with you this Friday of the fifth week of Lent, as we prepare for Holy Week.   

If there are anything like “best friends” in Jesus’s life, they would have to be the sisters Mary and Martha of Bethany, along with their brother Lazarus. Of the three, Mary appears to be the one who understands the implications of Jesus’s plan to go to Jerusalem. In Luke 10, she is the one who sits at Jesus’s feet rather than wait on tables. Here in John 12, Martha is once again waiting on tables, and Mary is once again at Jesus’s feet. This time, she’s not listening. She is offering a gift of powerful symbolism, anointing his feet with costly oil and wiping them with her hair (John 12:3).  

Image: "Mary anoints Jesus' feet" by Lawrence OP is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 

“Six days before the Passover Jesus came to Bethany, the home of Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead. There they gave a dinner for him” (John 12:1–2). Shortly before the events of John 12, Jesus had restored to life Mary’s recently-deceased brother Lazarus. The raising of Lazarus is the last provocation for the Jewish leadership. They are planning to kill Jesus (and Lazarus as well, as it turns out—John 11:50; 12:10). Jesus avoids traveling to Jerusalem for a short while. People wonder if he will dare to make a showing at the upcoming Passover. In fact, he will. To prepare for his entry into Jerusalem for the religious celebration, he stays with his three friends in Bethany about a mile outside the city. Mary and Martha and Lazarus throw a dinner party in Jesus’s honor.  

Like everybody else, Mary has heard the buzz. The cynical leaders are conspiring to take “one man’s life” in a ridiculous ploy to “save” the nation. Mary’s loving act is a wonderful counterpoint to the ironic and unwitting prophecy by Caiaphas that Jesus would die “for the nation … and not for the nation only,” as John comments, “but to gather into one the dispersed children of God” (John 11:52).  

Mary has comprehended the political climate following the restoration of her brother Lazarus. She’s become aware of the conspiracy against both Jesus and Lazarus. More than anything, I suspect, she has given thought to what Jesus had proclaimed of himself in advance of raising Lazarus from the dead: “I AM the Resurrection and the Life” (John 11:25). Somehow, she has rightly inferred Jesus’s “being resurrection and life” means he must first die. Resurrection, after all, comes only after death. Such an understanding accounts for the NRSV’s sage rendering of Jesus’s defense of her extravagance: “Leave her alone. She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial” (John 12:7).  

Mary has bought for Jesus an expensive and fragrant ointment that ordinarily would be used to prepare a corpse for interment. Perhaps she had just planned to show him the bottle she had acquired in advance, signaling her readiness to prepare his body for resurrection from the dead. With the purchase of the “pound of costly perfume made of pure nard” (John 12:3), Mary acknowledges, if reluctantly, that she understands what it’s going to take for him to be “resurrection and life.” If she had intended to anoint him on this occasion, you might have expected her to have a towel at hand for wiping his feet. Instead, in a spontaneous gesture, while Jesus is reclining at table, Mary pours the fragrant burial ointment on his feet and towels them with her hair. Here is one of the most poignant, tender, and loving scenes in all Scripture.  

“The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume” — John 12:3. The reader will be pardoned for being reminded of the powerful symbolism of smell elsewhere in the Bible. Paul describes Jesus as sacrificing himself as “an offering and sacrifice to God as a smell of fragrance” (my literal rendering of the Greek of Ephesians 5:2). Paul welcomes a gift from the Philippians as “a fragrant offering, an acceptable sacrifice, very pleasing to God” (Philippians 4:18 NET). We ourselves “are a sweet aroma of Christ to God” (2 Corinthians 2:15).  

Every time I walk into the Cathedral Church of St. Luke, my first sensation is that of the fragrance that exudes from the incense-soaked stone walls and pillars. And I think to myself, “That’s what church is supposed to smell like. It’s good to be here and to take my place among the generations who have offered up the sweet fragrance of worship to the Crucified and Risen Savior.” 

Contrast the beauty of the fragrance that Mary’s gift releases with the moral stench of Judas’s crass and disingenuous objection: “Why was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii and the money given to the poor?” (John 12:5). This isn’t the last time, alas, a moralistic voice is raised to deride beautiful and heartfelt worship in the name of a righteous cause, masking hypocritical and base motives. Happily, in the deeper experience of the church, generosity towards God encourages, rather than negates or frustrates, generosity towards our neighbor. In the realm of the Spirit of God, some things are not a zero-sum proposition.  

Be blessed this day,  

Reggie Kidd+ 

Faith in Redemption - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Thursday • 4/10/2025 •
Week of 5 Lent 

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 131; Psalm 132; Psalm 133; Jeremiah 26:1–16; Romans 11:1–12; John 10:19–42 

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

Welcome to Daily Office Devotions, where every Monday through Friday we consider some aspect of that day’s Scripture readings, as given in the Book of Common Prayer. I’m Reggie Kidd, and I’m grateful to be with you. This is Thursday of the fifth week of Lent.  

Through Jeremiah and Paul, God calls us today to embrace, and live with, a couple of challenging but encouraging truths.  

Jeremiah says that we can change God’s mind. God’s absolute control over everything could mean that nothing I do matters. It could be that his decisions are final, and there’s nothing I can do to make him change his mind about anything. But Jeremiah says that that isn’t quite true.  

Yahweh, in today’s reading, sends Jeremiah to the courtyard of the temple to tell the people of Jerusalem that the coming desolation he’s predicted is not inevitable: “It may be that they will listen, all of them, and will turn from their evil way, that I may change my mind about the disaster that I intend to bring on them because of their evil doings” (Jeremiah 26:3).  

There was precedent for this. When the pagan king of Nineveh heard about Jonah’s prophecies of doom, he called for people to cry out to God and turn from their evil and violent ways. “‘Who knows? God may relent and change his mind; he may turn from his fierce anger, so that we do not perish.’ When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil ways, God changed his mind about the calamity that he had said he would bring upon them; and he did not do it” (Jonah 3:9–10). And thus Nineveh was spared. However, because in Jeremiah’s day, the Jerusalemites did not “turn from their evil way,” Yahweh’s purpose of a punishing destruction does come to pass.  

Image: Daybreak, Reggie Kidd photo 

Lent is a time for taking stock. When I am walking on a rebellious path that can only lead to destruction, there’s nothing inevitable about my remaining on that path. Which means the consequences aren’t inevitable either. As the apostle John later writes: “If we confess our sins, he who is faithful and just will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9).  

Paul says human failure can produce God’s greater good. Paul wrestles mightily with the failure of his fellow Israelites to embrace Jesus as their Messiah. Once he has seen that Jesus Christ is the fulfillment of all the promises of Scripture, it’s mystifying to him that others who have been shaped by Scripture’s story don’t see that as well. But then he comes to understand that the failure of the Jewish mission has forced a Gentile mission that is wildly successful. He realizes that that Gentile mission is the very means by which God is fulfilling his promise that Abraham would be the father of nations (Genesis 12). Through Israel’s failure to believe, other people groups can experience the mercy of God. Paul calls this a mystery, a truth long hidden in Scripture that has now been revealed: “…how great among the Gentiles are the riches of the glory of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory” (Colossians 1:27).  

Gentiles who were living in darkness and undeserving of God’s mercy have now been offered mercy, thanks to Israel’s rejection of the gospel. Ironically, Israelites are now in the Gentiles’ position, living in darkness and in need of just as much mercy. “Just as [Gentiles] were once disobedient to God but have now received mercy because of [Israel’s] disobedience, so they have now been disobedient in order that, by the mercy shown to you, they too may now receive mercy. For God has imprisoned all in disobedience so that he may be merciful to all” (Romans 11:30–32). What a wonderful punchline: “…that he may be merciful to all.”  

The long and the short of it is that biblical faith is a faith in redemption, because God has a way of turning evil on its head and producing good out of it. That’s something for all of us to keep in mind when we find relationships to be challenging, self-discoveries to be disappointing, and headlines to be depressing. Paul closes today’s passage in Romans this way: “Now if [Israel’s] stumbling means riches for the world, and if their defeat means riches for Gentiles, how much more will their full inclusion mean!” (Romans 11:12). There’s a wonderful hopefulness here. With his pointing to the prospect of “full inclusion” for Israel, Paul opens for us an always-buoyant approach to life under our God of mercy.   

Collect for the Fifth Sunday in Lent. Almighty God, you alone can bring into order the unruly wills and affections of sinners: Grant your people grace to love what you command and desire what you promise; that, among the swift and varied changes of the world, our hearts may surely there be fixed where true joys are to be found; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen. 

Be blessed this day,  

Reggie Kidd+ 

We Need Fear Nothing - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Wednesday • 4/9/2025 •
Week of 5 Lent 

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 119:145–176; Jeremiah 25:30–38; Romans 10:14–21; John 10:1–18 

This morning’s Canticles are: following the OT reading, Canticle 11 (“The Third Song of Isaiah,” Isaiah 60:1–3,11a,14c,18–19, BCP, p. 87); following the Epistle reading, Canticle 16 (“The Song of Zechariah,” Luke 1:68–79, BCP, p. 92) 

Welcome to Daily Office Devotions, where every Monday through Friday we ask how God might direct our lives from that day’s Scripture readings, as given in the Book of Common Prayer. I’m Reggie Kidd, and I’m grateful to be with you this Wednesday of the fifth week of Lent. We are in Year 1 of the Daily Office Lectionary. 

It so happens that the very first posting of these Devotions appeared on the Wednesday of the fifth week of Lent in the year 2020, at the beginning of the outbreak of a worldwide pandemic.  

On this anniversary of a sorts, I’d like return to some orienting thoughts I offered at the time. Here’s an excerpt from the first Devotional I wrote: 

“Social distancing” can be, at one and the same time, lonely and suffocating.  

Lonely because you’re isolated from friends and coworkers.  

Suffocating if there’s no break, on the one hand, from family (and maybe work-from-home?) obligations, and, on the other, from bombardment by the media with oppressive and frightening words: pandemic … testing … economic collapse … hoarding … escalating deaths.  

One way to resist loneliness is to join millions around the world who practice Daily Morning Prayer, a daily routine of Scripture reading and of prayer (I follow the Book of Common Prayer 1979’s, Rite II, pp. 75–102). In Daily Morning Prayer (shorthand for which can be the “Daily Office” or simply the “Office”), Scripture reading is governed by a lectionary that takes us all together over time through the Bible’s amazing story of God’s saving, loving grace. And prayers are guided by biblical canticles and daily themes, uniting our hearts to lift “one voice,” and freeing space for our individual hearts to voice their unique needs.  

When I pray the Daily Office, I know that Jesus’s promise is being fulfilled, the one that says, “Where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there in the midst of them.” I know that friends around the world are doing exactly what I am doing. We become Christ’s Body gathered throughout space, and even throughout time, as we read what someone has called “ancient words ever true” and as we pray prayers crafted over centuries by godly hearts.  

At the same time that I resist loneliness through the Office, I push back against the suffocation of the day’s pressing demands and the oppressing assault of the news cycle. Instead, I breathe the fresh air of God’s promises, and I take my place among the kingdom of priests that intercede for a world that one day will be released from its bondage to decay. In Scripture reading, I inhabit a world in which there is hope, and in prayer I defy the darkness that otherwise seems so prevalent. …  

You don’t have to be alone. You can be a part of a vast family united by Word and prayer. You don’t have to be suffocated by obligations and fear. You can take in the vivifying truths of God’s goodness and offer up in prayer the world he promises to restore.  

As we travel in this next through the other half of the Old Testament and repeat the whole of the New Testament, may God richly form us in his Son, by the Spirit as we read and pray together.  

Image: Historien d'art, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons 

Now, for today’s readings: Wednesdays always take us through a portion of Psalm 119. Today’s section reminds us that we need fear nothing in this life. “You, O Lord, are near at hand, and all your commandments are true. Long have I known from your decrees that you have established them forever” (Psalm 119:151–152 BCP). May the nearness of the Lord and the truth of his Word sustain us this and every day.  

Jeremiah offers heartening words for those of us who grow weary of the “bad guys” always seeming to win, of evil seeming consistently to triumph over good, and of error seeming to be more plausible than truth to too many. Jeremiah promises that Yahweh will not let evil and error triumph: “Like a lion he has left his covert” (Jeremiah 25:38). One day, he will roar, and he will set all things to rights. 

Romans. Until that day, Paul urges us with joy to be about the task of proclaiming the fact that in the midst of the fallenness and brokenness of the human condition, God has planted his standard. God has raised his Son from the dead as the beginning of the setting of all things to right, and as a refuge against the coming storm of judgment.  Our chief task until he comes again is to proclaim that good news: “How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!” (Romans 10:15; quoting Isaiah 52:7). May we take our part in telling the good news of God’s risen Son. May we enjoy the beauty of participating in God’s reclaiming lost souls for his “new creation” (2 Corinthians 5:17; Galatians 6:15).  

John introduces us today to one of his favorite themes. Jesus says, “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep” (John 10:11). Fierce though he may be in judgment against the false shepherds and the wolves, fiercer still is he in his love for his sheep. Fierce enough to give his life that they may live. May we know beyond a shadow of a doubt the ferocity—and the tenderness—of his love.  

Be blessed this day,  

Reggie Kidd+  

Lift Up Our Sight - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Tuesdayˀ• 4/8/2025 • 
Week of 5 Lent 

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 121; Psalm 122; Psalm 123; Jeremiah 25:8–17; Romans 10:1–13; John 9:18–41 

More extended thoughts on today’s Romans reading in this post from last summer: on Romans 10:1–13 

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

Welcome to Daily Office Devotions, where every Monday through Friday we draw insights from that day’s Scripture readings, as given in the Book of Common Prayer. I’m Reggie Kidd, and I’m grateful to be with you. This is Tuesday of the fifth week of Epiphany, as we prepare for Holy Week, and we are in Year 1 of the Daily Office Lectionary.   

God turns things on their head: 

Judgments about power. Judah (“all the tribes of the north”) have failed to keep God’s covenant. As a result, Yahweh will subject them to seventy years of exile at the hands of the Babylonians. To that end he has raised up Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, even calling him “my servant.” While Nebuchadnezzar shows some signs of recognizing Yahweh’s lordship (see the account of his wrestling with faith in Daniel), his successors see themselves as the source of their own power. Yahweh will hold them to account for that arrogance. The “cup of the wine of the wrath” that Judah drinks will pass next to the nations that come against her. “For thus the Lord, the God of Israel, said to me: Take from my hand this cup of the wine of wrath, and make all the nations to whom I send you drink it. They shall drink and stagger and go out of their minds because of the sword that I am sending among them” (Jeremiah 25:15–16).  

Whatever power and authority we have in this world is a gift, and, “Every good gift comes from above,” says James, brother of Jesus (James 1:17). We do well to remember the gift comes with the special obligation of remembering its source. Only then will we use it for the good that he intends.  

Image: El Greco, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons 

There will always be ultimate vindication for those who pray (per one of this morning’s psalms):  

Have mercy upon us, O Lord, have mercy, * 
for we have had more than enough of contempt, 
Too much of the scorn of the indolent rich, * 
and of the derision of the proud (Psalm 123:4–5).  

Assessments about righteousness and goodness. Power is not the only thing that must be received and treated as a gift. So is righteousness or goodness. In Romans 10, Paul teaches that the purpose (the telos, or goal or aim) of the Law for him and his fellow Jews was, in the first place, to make them understand that they could not depend on a righteousness of their own. The Law, then, had its second purpose, to paint a portrait of the coming Christ. He would bring a righteousness “from God” that would be God’s own gift to us (Romans 10:3).  

Even for those of us who enjoy the privilege of being raised in a home where values and morality have been instilled in us, today’s passage still rings true. We all fall short (Romans 3:23). Nobody lives up completely to the standards to which they aspire. All of us face, then, the question of whether we should trust that our “best” is good enough, or whether we need to trust the inner voice that insists that our “best” is not enough. But more, can we trust what the Bible says about the Christ who has come down to us? We don’t have to (pardon the Led Zeppelin allusion) “climb a stairway to heaven.” Can we look to the One who did keep the law perfectly?  He offers the gift of his righteousness and goodness to be our own, if we will just accept it.  

Conclusions about (in)sight. Jesus says that his coming prompts the most amazing of reversals when it comes to spiritual sight: “I came into this world for judgment so that those who do not see may see, and those who do see may become blind” (John 9:39). This statement follows the authorities’ close investigation of the facts about the blind man’s healing (facts which their resolute lack of faith prevents them from acknowledging). Despite being stewards of the great tradition that looked for the world’s Redeemer, they refuse to “see” what is happening right before their very eyes. As for the man born blind, he continues to share the facts as he is dragged into a second inquisition. And with every expression of the plain truth that, “I once was blind, but now I see,” he awakens a bit more to who it is who has given him his sight. Eventually, he is granted spiritual sight as well as physical sight: “He said, ‘Lord, I believe.’ And he worshiped him” (John 9:38).  

Spiritual blindness is a constant, whether there is a “great tradition” like that of the Jews of Jesus’s day, or whether whatever “great tradition” that may have held sway in a society’s past is crumbling, as is the case in our day. May our eyes, as Psalm 123 says, stay open and lifted up. May we not be blinded by the purported light from competing sources around us—whether crazed conspiracy theorists, saccharine and smug defenders of the status quo, wannabe saviors from the left or the right, or self-styled prophets and prophetesses of narcissistic religion.  

May God grant us the grace to let our sense of what is real and true, of what we find to be beautiful and lovely, to be shaped more and more by His great story as it unfolds for us in these readings in the Daily Office. May our constant prayer be:  

To you I lift up my eyes, * 
to you enthroned in the heavens. … 
So our eyes look to the Lord our God, * 
until he show us his mercy (Psalm 123:1–3). 

Be blessed this day, 

Reggie Kidd+ 

The Light of the World - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Monday • 4/7/2025 •
Week of 5 Lent 

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 31; Jeremiah 24:1–10; Romans 9:19–33; John 9:1–17 

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

Welcome to Daily Office Devotions, where every Monday through Friday we explore that day’s Scripture readings, as given in the Book of Common Prayer. I’m Reggie Kidd. Thanks for joining me. This is Monday of the fifth week of Lent, a season of preparation for Holy Week, and we are in Year 1 of the Daily Office Lectionary. 

Good figs and bad figs. There are so many wrinkles in God’s plan to reverse our fallen state through the children of Abraham. Anticipating Judah’s exile, Jeremiah says there will be two groups of people, each of which he likens to a basket of figs. One basket “had very good figs, like first-ripe figs” (Jeremiah 24:2). These “figs” will be taken away into exile in Babylon, where Yahweh will “build them up and not tear them down; … plant them and not pluck them up” (Jeremiah 24:6). These figs will be given “a heart to know that I am the Lord; and they shall be my people and I will be their God, for they shall return to me with their whole heart” (Jeremiah 24:7).  

The other basket “had very bad figs, so bad that they could not be eaten” (Jeremiah 24:2). These “figs” will remain behind in Jerusalem or seek refuge in Egypt, where their evil ways will provoke the utter destruction of the city, making them “a horror, an evil thing, to all the kingdoms of the earth—a disgrace, a byword, a taunt, and a curse…” (Jeremiah 24:9–10).  

Image: Andrey Mironov, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons 

Objects of wrath and objects of mercy. These two baskets of figs, one good and one bad, become illustrations of the point that Paul makes in Romans 9:6, “not all Israelites truly belong to Israel, and not all of Abraham’s children are his true descendants.” The principle that some are “objects of mercy” and some are “objects of wrath” cuts through the middle of the most favored people in the biblical storyline (Romans 9:22,23). The point is that nobody enjoys entitlement by virtue of pedigree. All of us depend upon a mercy that spares us the condemnation we deserve. All of us require God’s gracious gift of a heart that responds in love to God’s own loving heart.  

The determinative issue on our part is whether, like the “objects of wrath,” we think we are sufficiently good that we don’t need God’s mercy; or whether, like the “objects of mercy,” we know we ought to receive wrath, but gratefully discover we’ve been given the grace to ask for mercy through the cross of Christ. That’s really all we need to know about the whys and wherefores of the mystery of how God draws some into his work of new creation, and does not do so with others. In your mercy, Lord… 

The light of the world and faux light. One more wrinkle in God’s redemptive plan is the way the coming of the Light of the World, Jesus, exposes faux light for the darkness it is. 

Through the story of the healing of the man born blind in John 9, the religious leaders’ spiritual blindness becomes increasingly evident. So preoccupied with extra-scriptural scruples regarding sabbath-keeping are they (there is no law against healing on the sabbath in Torah!), that they fail to “see” the wonder of Jesus’s gift of light to the blind man.  

But there is also a more subtle faux light: the disciples need to understand the blind man’s state in the first place. They suppose there must be a direct, mechanical, tit-for-tat correlation between this man’s plight and sin. Either he sinned, they presume to think, or his parents sinned. The disciples don’t seem to grasp that sin is not that simple. There lies a powerful dominion of darkness beyond blithe answers and quick fixes. Jesus tosses aside their shallow supposition: “Neither this man nor his parents sinned; he was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him” (John 9:3). What is happening before their very eyes is God at work, bringing back into the world the radiant glory that departed when our original parents said, “Yes,” to the serpent rather than to their Maker. Jesus, the Light of the World, is turning back the darkness that descended that sad day.  

The next time something bad happens to you, I pray that your first thought is not, “What unconfessed sin in my life brought this on?”, but rather, “Lord, help me to ‘see’ what you wish to do here, and how I can be a part of it. And, if part of that is confession, here goes… Let your kingdom come! Amen!!”   

Be blessed this day,  

Reggie Kidd+