The Redeemer We Need - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Wednesday • 5/14/2025 •
Week of 4 Easter  

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 119:49–72; Daniel 7:15–28; Colossians 1:24–2:7; Luke 6:27–38 

This morning’s Canticles are: before the Psalm reading, Pascha Nostrum (“Christ Our Passover,” BCP, p. 83); 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 Fourth Week of Easter. We are in Year 1 of the Daily Office Lectionary. “Alleluia! Christ is risen! The Lord is risen indeed! Alleluia!” 

In Daniel 7, the prophet receives the first of a series of visions forecasting continued woe for God’s people …  to be followed eventually by final blessing. It is revealed to Daniel that there will be ongoing demonic resistance to God’s redeeming purposes in the world ... followed eventually by God’s final victory over sin and death. Having lived through so much grief with his fellow exiles in Babylon, Daniel is distressed to know that even more woes lie ahead. Nonetheless, he is permitted to see that ultimately God’s good purposes will prevail.  

Image: "O Cristo Redentor (Christ the Redeemer) - One of the New Seven Wonders of the World" by Jorge Lascar is licensed under CC BY 2.0 

Despite his own distress, Daniel blesses us in no small measure, for he gives New Testament writers the vocabulary for their own insights into God’s redeeming purposes.  

One like a son of man. Eighty-one times in the Gospels Jesus is called “Son of Man,” an expression that originates in this chapter in Daniel. In fact, “Son of Man” is Jesus’s favorite self-designation. And though he normally leaves it to his listeners to figure out for themselves that his origins are “from above,” during his final discourse and at his trial he spells it out: “I am [the Christ]; and ‘you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of the Power,’ and ‘coming with the clouds of heaven’” (Mark 14:62; and see also Matthew 26:64; Luke 22:68; as well as Matthew 24:30; Mark 13:26; Luke 27).  

Daniel provides the perfect pitch for getting the Christological balance: “I saw one like a son of man coming with the clouds of heaven” (Daniel 7:14). Jesus is like us by virtue of sharing our humanity. He is unlike us by virtue of his divinity. “Like us” so that he could bear all our sins and griefs. “Unlike us” so that he could forgive our sins and bring heaven’s reign to earth. Seeing as in a mirror dimly, Daniel perceived that we would receive exactly the Redeemer we so desperately need.  

A beast and a horn. We noted as we read through John’s epistles that New Testament writers are not surprised to find that Jesus’s inauguration of the Kingdom of God has provoked a Satanic pushback. In John’s terms, the pushback in his day means the emergence of the spirit of antichrist and the sending out of many antichrists to oppose the true Christ and his people (1 John 2:18,22; 4:3; 2 John 7). Satan’s rebellion will one day result in an explosion of evil under the Antichrist, the beast from the sea (Revelation 13) … which rebellion Christ will put down in no uncertain terms (Revelation 19 and 20). The apostle Paul explains the same dynamic in terms of a present “spirit of lawlessness,” which will result in the emergence one day of a “man of lawlessness,” whom “the Lord Jesus will destroy with the breath of his mouth, annihilating him by the manifestation of his coming” (2 Thessalonians 2:1–12, and especially verse 8).  

All of this Daniel anticipates in his vision of the fourth beast and the little horn that wages war against God’s people, but whose “dominion shall be taken away, to be consumed and totally destroyed” (Daniel 7:19–26, and especially verse 26). In the short run, Daniel seems to anticipate corrupt and blasphemous rulers in Palestine before Christ’s coming, like the Seleucid ruler Antiochus IV Epiphanes (215–164 BC) and the Roman emperor Caligula (AD 12–41), who attempt to corrupt worship in the Jewish temple. In the long run, Daniel provides New Testament believers a most valuable perspective on how to live between the first and second comings of Christ: exulting in the victory Christ has already won, battling against doomed powers and principalities in the present, and anticipating Christ’s ultimate triumph over all evil powers in the future.  

A time, times, and a half time. The apostle John knows that Messiah’s people will suffer, but that the days of their suffering will be limited. John uses Daniel’s symbolic “a time, times, and a half time” (three and a half years) to describe the season in which the lady (an image of the Church) is kept safe and nourished in the wilderness from the serpent (an image of a mortally wounded Satan — Revelation 12:13–17, especially verse 14). The number is symbolic of the entire Church-age, which, in the light of eternity’s everlasting blessings, will prove to have been a short season of travail.  

For his part, the apostle Paul has seen the inauguration of the Kingdom of the Son of Man. He has experienced knowing what it is to be “delivered…from the power of darkness and transferred…to the kingdom of [God’s] beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins” (Colossians 1:13). For that reason, Paul rejoices.  

He rejoices for another reason as well, he explains in today’s reading from Colossians. He knows, along with John, that the consummation of the Kingdom still lies in the future. He also understands that before the consummation, the sufferings of Messiah’s people must be completed. Even if it seems ironic to us, Paul, as an ambassador for Christ, rejoices, because he shares sufferings in his ministry, as Christ had experienced suffering in his own ministry. “I am now rejoicing in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am completing what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church” (Colossians 1:24). In Philippians (written probably about the same time as Colossians), Paul explains that we, too, have the privilege of knowing both “the power of Christ’s resurrection” and “the fellowship of his sufferings” (Philippians 3:10).  

As you and I take up our measure of the sufferings of Christ in this age (in whatever form they may take), may we experience them for what they are: a fellowship with Christ that we would not otherwise know. May we, with Paul, “count it all joy” — if through genuine tears — to know that privilege.  

Be blessed this day,  

Reggie Kidd+ 

He Will Overthrow the Beasts - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Tuesday • 5/13/2025 •
Week of 4 Easter 

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 45; Daniel 7:1–14; Colossians 1:15–23; Luke 6:12–26 

This morning’s Canticles are: before the Psalm reading, Pascha Nostrum (“Christ Our Passover,” BCP, p. 83); 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 Fourth Week of Easter, and we are in Year 1 of the Daily Office Lectionary. “Alleluia! Christ is risen! The Lord is risen indeed! Alleluia!” 

Daniel’s dream. At the beginning of the world, humans were supposed to exercise dominion over the beasts of the field, not vice versa. Even after the debacle in the Garden, Israel’s mission to the world was to preserve this memory: “What is man that you are mindful of him? … You crowned him with glory and honor. You have given him rule over the works of your hands, put all things at his feet” (Psalm 8:6b–7). Alas, as the writer to the Hebrews notes, this is not what we experience: “Yet at present we do not see ‘all things subject to him’” (Hebrews 2:8b). In Daniel chapter seven, Daniel dreams a dream that is terrifying because it is a dream of humans in subjection to beasts. Since the fall in the Garden, everything is upside down.  

Image: Daniel's vision of the four beasts from the sea and the Ancient of Days - Silos Apocalypse (1109)British Library , CC0, via Wikimedia Commons 

Thus, Israel had been raised up to forecast the restoration of all things, and to point the way to the return to Eden. However, at the nadir of her own history, Israel has experienced humanity’s subjection to beast-like forces. Because of her sin and refusal to obey Yahweh, she has been subordinated to the lion (Babylon) and the bear (the Medo-Persians). Further bad news: worse is to come in the rule of the leopard (Greece) and a frightening beast (Rome—Daniel 7:4–7).  

Nonetheless, there is good news, too. Israel’s mission will not be finally aborted, for, by God’s grace, she will usher the world into an era in which humankind’s dominion will be restored. As the writer to the Hebrews puts it: “Yet at present we do not see ‘all things subject to him,’ but we do see Jesus ‘crowned with glory and honor’” (Hebrews 2:8). For, as Daniel’s dream goes on: One “like a son of man” appears in the heavenly courts to receive “dominion and glory and kingship” so that all peoples should give him honor. He will finally overthrow the beasts, and grant “possession of the kingdom” to his people (Daniel 7:22,27).  

In tomorrow’s Devotional we will explore the way the New Testament applies various images from Daniel’s dream of beasts to Jesus, the Son of Man, and to his mission to return humankind to the dominion for which we were created.  

Luke’s beatitudes. One of the most profitable ways to read Jesus’s beatitudes is as a template for what it means for us to be released from vices and patterns of life that diminish us by making us subject to the beasts of uncontrolled and unredeemed desires.  

Jesus came to deliver us from being owned and dominated by our possessions, so that we may find lasting wealth in him (Luke 6:20,24).  

Jesus came to deliver us from the oppression of our appetites, so that we may find satisfaction in him (Luke 6:21a,25a).  

Jesus came to deliver us from living for entertainment’s fleeting empty snicker, so that we may know communion’s eternally joyous roar (Luke 6:21b,25b).  

Jesus came to rescue us from the prison of needing others’ approval, so that we may know a fellowship that matters: that of the prophets, apostles, saints, and martyrs (Luke 6:22,26).  

A Prayer of Self-Dedication: Almighty and eternal God, so draw our hearts to you, so guide our minds, so fill our imaginations, so control our wills, that we may be wholly yours, utterly dedicated to you; and then use us, we pray, as you will, and always to your glory and the welfare of your people; through our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen. 

Be blessed this day,  

Reggie Kidd+ 

Dare to Be a Daniel - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Monday • 5/12/2025 •
Week of 4 Easter  

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 41; Psalm 52; Daniel 6:16–28; Colossians 1:1–14; Luke 6:1–11 

Comments on Colossians 1:1–14 from DDD 4/28/2020: https://tinyurl.com/babe2yte 

This morning’s Canticles are: before the Psalm reading, Pascha Nostrum (“Christ Our Passover,” BCP, p. 83); 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 Fourth Week of Easter, and we are in Year 1 of the Daily Office Lectionary. “Alleluia! Christ is risen! The Lord is risen indeed! Alleluia!” 

A note: For the past two weeks, our Old Testament reading of chapters one through six of the Book of Daniel has tracked the career of the prophet. He is a model of God’s instruction to the exiles in Babylon to “seek the welfare of the city” of their exile (Jeremiah 29:10). We have seen him speak truth to successive rulers: Nebuchadnezzar, Belshazzar, and Darius. We have seen the Lord prosper his hand all the way through the Babylonian hegemony, even to the rise of the Medes and Persians who will end the Jews’ exile. The Daily Office is content to narrate the career, but then leave the Book of Daniel halfway through, just as the book turns to the mind-blowing series of futuristic, apocalyptic visions that Daniel received in chapters seven through twelve.  

For my own reading in the Old Testament over the next two weeks, I plan to substitute the excluded (and canonical) chapters from Daniel for the lectionary’s selections from the (non-canonical) Book of Wisdom. It’s not that there’s no wisdom in the Book of Wisdom. Its pairing with Paul’s letter to the Colossians makes some sense; after all, it is in Colossians that Paul treats Christ as One in whom the wisdom of God dwells bodily (Colossians 2:9). Nonetheless, I’d like to see what wisdom Daniel brings to our devotions as he writes what looks in many ways like the prologue to the Book of Revelation.  

Image: "Daniel in the Lion's Den" is marked with CC0 1.0  

God rewards Daniel’s courage. First, though, we attend to Daniel’s deliverance from the lions’ den in Daniel 6. Daniel is a very old man by the time the Medes and Persians conquer the Babylonians. He offers counsel and wisdom to his new overlords just as he had to the old ones. So competent is he that he is on the verge of being appointed “over the whole kingdom” (Daniel 6:4).  

However, envy strikes. Daniel’s rivals concoct a plan to require, under pain of death, a veneration of Darius, ruler of the Medes and Persians. They know that Daniel will refuse. Just as his enemies expect, Daniel continues his worship of the God of Israel: three times a day (see Psalm 55:17–18) he kneels in prayer toward Jerusalem. Daniel’s rivals turn him in. Reluctantly, Darius imposes the death penalty (consignment to a lions’ den) but not without first praying, “May your God, whom you faithfully serve, deliver you!” (Daniel 6:17). After a night of fasting, Darius orders the den opened, and he happily discovers that Daniel is alive. Darius acknowledges Daniel’s God to be “the living God, enduring forever” (Daniel 6:27).  

This incident is the capstone in a career of courage and faithfulness in the challenging circumstance of being under the dual obligation of duty to God and to neighbor (even to an enemy-neighbor). Through his various confrontations over diet, dream interpretation, and false worship, Daniel has known the Lord’s sustaining love and prospering hand. What we will see in the next two weeks is that the Lord has also made Daniel a vessel for the revelation of spectacular and hope-filled visions for the coming of God’s future kingdom.  

It’s easy to see why Daniel’s life would inspire the revival hymnist P. P. Bliss to write: 

1 Standing by a purpose true, heeding God’s command, 
Honor them, the faithful few! All hail to Daniel’s band! 

Refrain 
Dare to be a Daniel! Dare to stand alone! 
Dare to have a purpose firm! Dare to make it known! 

2 Many mighty men are lost, daring not to stand, 
Who for God had been a host by joining Daniel’s band. [Refrain] 

3 Many giants, great and tall, stalking through the land, 
headlong to the earth would fall, if met by Daniel’s band. [Refrain] 

4 Hold the gospel banner high; on to vict’ry grand; 
Satan and his host defy, and shout for Daniel’s band. [Refrain] 

May you and I heed the same call:  
Dare to be a Daniel! Dare to stand alone! 
Dare to have a purpose firm! Dare to make it known! 

Be blessed this day,  

Reggie Kidd+ 

Progress Ain’t Always All It’s Cracked Up to Be - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Friday • 5/9/2025 •
Week of 3 Easter 

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 105:1–22; Daniel 6:1–15; 2 John; Luke 5:12–26 

This morning’s Canticles are: before the Psalm reading, Pascha Nostrum (“Christ Our Passover,” BCP, p. 83); 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 Third week of Easter. “Alleluia! Christ is risen! The Lord is risen indeed! Alleluia!” 

“Progress” ain’t always all it’s cracked up to be. “Everyone who does not abide in the teaching of Christ, but goes beyond it, does not have God” (2 John 9a). The New American Bible translation brilliantly captures the sense of this verse: “Anyone who is so ‘progressive’ as not to remain in the teaching of the Christ does not have God.” The NAB editors explain their translation: “Anyone who is so ‘progressive’: literally, ‘Anyone who goes ahead.’ Some gnostic groups held the doctrine of the Christ come in the-flesh to be a first step in belief, which the more advanced and spiritual believer surpassed and abandoned in his knowledge of the spiritual Christ. The author affirms that fellowship with God may be gained only by holding to the complete doctrine of Jesus Christ (1 Jn 2:22–23; 4:2; 5:5–6).” 

The biblical portrait of Jesus’s incarnation cannot be improved upon; and those who try to do so create a profound distortion. Some lose his full humanity. Others lose his full deity. Still others insert disharmony between his humanity and his deity. For four centuries the church fought back various attempts to “progress” beyond the biblical portrait of Jesus. Arians diminished his deity. Gnostics deprived him of his humanity. Nestorians made his divinity and his humanity into virtual rivals within him. Apollinarians envisioned Jesus’s divinity absorbing his humanity. In the end, the church’s way of not “going beyond the teaching of Christ,” but rather of locking it in, crystallizing it, and anchoring it was the Chalcedonian formula of AD 381: “Christ, Son, Lord, Only begotten, recognized in two natures, without confusion, without change, without division, without separation.”  

If I may offer an opinion. Today’s church is not in peril because it doesn’t have the right answers about gun control, border control, reparations, marriage equality, or planet warming. Not that those questions don’t matter. They do. But every policy issue raises pre-political, pre-policy questions. Questions about fundamental values of human flourishing and well-being underlie each issue: sanctity, authority, loyalty, fairness, freedom, generosity, care. (In his 2013 book The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion, social psychologist Jonathan Haidt offers excellent reflections on these pre-political values.) Without a clear conception of how God’s coming in the flesh in Jesus Christ shapes us at this pre-political level, we are blowing smoke when we pontificate as though we were policy experts.   

In other words, the church is imperiled because it doesn’t know how to answer this question: Who is Jesus Christ? For knowing Jesus Christ — what does he say about sanctity, authority, loyalty, fairness, freedom, generosity, care? — that is the first order of business in being able to say anything about anything else.  

It doesn’t matter whether our sense of “progress” moves us to refashion Jesus as a merely mortal moral example, a nearly divine champion of our cause, or an otherworldly Being who swoops in to rescue us for heaven. To move beyond the Bible’s and the ancient church’s Christology is to step into a void.  

Was he born of the Virgin Mary and of the Holy Spirit, to preach good news to the poor and inaugurate God’s Kingdom? Did he die in the flesh for our sins? Did he rise bodily for our justification before God’s law court, for our adoption into the family of God and for our sanctification into the image of Christ? Will he return bodily in power and splendor to glorify the church and transfigure creation? These are stunning truths—verities not to “progress” beyond, and they are foundational premises for working out any of life’s challenges.  

May God give us the grace to “remain in the teaching” about Christ, so that we do not “progress” our way right past it. May God therefore give us grace to pray well and act effectively on behalf of Christ in every area of blight and brokenness and suffering and sorrow.  

“Grace, mercy, and peace will be with us from God the Father and from Jesus Christ, the Father’s Son, in truth and love” (2 John 3).  

Be blessed “in truth and love” this day,  

Reggie Kidd+ 

Being Confident in Christ - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Thursday • 5/8/2025 •
Week of 3 Easter 

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 37:1–18; Daniel 5:13–30; 1 John 5:13–21; Luke 5:1–11 

This morning’s Canticles are: before the Psalm reading, Pascha Nostrum (“Christ Our Passover,” BCP, p. 83); 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. This is Thursday of the Third Week of Easter, and I’m grateful to be with you. “Alleluia! Christ is risen! The Lord is risen indeed! Alleluia!” 

John wrote his Gospel to introduce people to Jesus and to invite an initial faith in him: “But these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name” (John 20:31). By contrast, he writes 1 John to assure people who already believe in Jesus that they indeed have eternal life: “I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, so that you may know that you have eternal life” (1 John 5:13). John feels compelled to write because false teachers in the church are shaking believers’ faith by teaching that Jesus was less than truly God-man, and that he had not offered a perfect sacrifice for their sins. They were teaching, falsely, that sin was no big deal anyway. John knows that if we lose those precious truths, our consciences will rise up in protest and shout condemnation to our hearts. We will treat people badly. And we will know spiritual emptiness.  

Image: Jean Bourdichon, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons 

Being firmly established in the certainty that Jesus is who he says he is (the Great I AM who has come in the flesh to redeem all creation and to save sinners) brings wonderful benefits.  

Confidence, even boldness, in prayer. “And this is the boldness we have in him, that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. And if we know that he hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have obtained the requests made of him” (1 John 5:14–15). Knowing him means we find our wills becoming aligned with his. It is in intimate and sustained prayer that alignment happens. For this very reason, our desires and therefore our prayers come increasingly to reflect his own heart. There’s absolutely no other way to learn this valuable lesson than, well, in praying … a lot.  

Deep concern for the straying. Humble and godly poise in the face of hostility. John says we will confront two kinds of people caught up in error and sin, those who “sin not unto death,” and those who “sin unto death” (1 John 5:15,16 KJV). For the former we strive in prayer; for the latter we do not. John’s Gospel has powerful examples of those who “sin not unto death”: the woman at the well, for instance, and Peter. He also has powerful examples of those who “sin unto death”: those who “love darkness rather than light,” for instance, and those who “deny the Son”—and, of course, Judas.  

From our Old Testament reading, Daniel exemplifies both responses. Nebuchadnezzar had boasted of his glory, his majesty, and his accomplishments. Daniel warned him the Most High would bring him low, doing so to teach him that “Heaven has sovereignty” (Daniel 4:25).  

Years later, Daniel’s message to Belshazzar was quite different (Belshazzar was steward and son of Nabonidus, Nebuchadnezzzar’s son-in-law and the last official king of Babylon). In his 80s by now, Daniel has observed Belshazzar’s refusal to learn from Nebuchadnezzar’s experience. Belshazzar’s defiling of the Jerusalem temple’s vessels is a final defiant rebuffing of Israel’s God. And so there appear the mysterious letters on the wall, a final verdict: MENE, MENE TEKEL PERES (“NUMBERED, NUMBERED, WEIGHED, DIVIDED”). The Babylonian empire has been found wanting; it is about to be taken over by the Medes and the Persians. There’s no praying for Belshazzar, for “the writing is on the wall” (this account is where that proverb comes from). That very night he perishes. With equipoise, Daniel is able to deliver both messages, knowing the King of Heaven has sovereignty. As can the followers of Jesus.  

Certainty that we are “in” Christ: that is, a profound sense of being held in the eternal divine embrace, an embrace from which, no matter what, we will never, ever be let go. God sent his own dear Son for our benefit. The Son touches our lives with an approach that is particular to each of us, whether we are confused like Nicodemus, living in sin like the woman at the well, wallowing in slothful self-pity like the lame man at Bethsaida, walking in the dark like the man born blind, or grieving the loss of a loved one like Mary and Martha. To each of us he comes. For all of us he was lifted up on the cross to draw us to himself. Reigning now in heaven, he comes to us even now, in the Person of the Holy Spirit, in the Sacraments, and in the fellowship of those whose love makes the invisible God tangible. That is why the next to last words of this profoundly pastoral letter are these: “[A]nd we are in him who is true, in his Son Jesus Christ. He is the true God and eternal life” (1 John 5:20).  

Be blessed this day,  

Reggie Kidd 

He Sent His Gift to Those Who Believe - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Wednesday • 5/7/2025 •
Week of 3 Easter  

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 38; Daniel 5:1–12; 1 John 5:1–12; Luke 4:38–44 

This morning’s Canticles are: before the Psalm reading, Pascha Nostrum (“Christ Our Passover,” BCP, p. 83); 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 Third Week of Easter. We are in Year 1 of the Daily Office Lectionary. “Alleluia! Christ is risen! The Lord is risen indeed! Alleluia!” 

How do we know God? We don’t have to decipher mysterious words on the wall (Daniel 5:1–12). We don’t have to decide if we can take the word of an expelled demon (Luke 4:41). We have, says John, the water and the blood and the Spirit. “This is the one who came by water and blood, Jesus Christ, not with the water only but with the water and the blood. And the Spirit is the one that testifies, for the Spirit is the truth. There are three that testify: the Spirit and the water and the blood, and these three agree” (1 John 5:6–8). The water, the blood, and the Spirit—these three, he says, are God’s true testimony about his Son, and about the life that we have in him.  

Image: "Inspiration" by Lawrence OP is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 

The water speaks. John reminds us of that day when he saw water flowing from the spear wound in Jesus’ side (John 19:34). It cannot but underscore the fact that Jesus came to us in the water of baptism to wash away our sins. At the River Jordan, John the Baptist recognizes the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29). Jesus says he will provide living water that will eternally quench our thirst: from his own being will flow rivers of living water (John 4 and 7). The blind man washes in the pool of Siloam, and receives his sight (John 9). With a basin of water and a servant’s towel, Jesus models his new regime of love (John 13). Jesus still comes to us in the water of baptism, to purify us and give us new life. This is God’s true testimony for us.  

The blood speaks. John also calls us back to the sight of the blood flowing from Jesus’s pierced side (John 19:34). On that cross, as we’ve seen in our reading of 1 John, Jesus shed his blood to be a propitiation (substitution) for our sins. Lifted up on the cross, Jesus becomes healing for the soul-sickness of sin (John 3). He casts out the prince who has kept the nations in darkness. And he begins to draw all people to himself (John 12). To this day, Jesus comes to us in the wine of the Eucharist (“Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them”—John 6:56), to assure us of forgiveness and to give us a foretaste of the banquet at the end of the age. This too is God’s true testimony for us.  

The Spirit speaks. The Spirit also testifies, says John.  The Spirit came to rest upon Jesus at his baptism, empowering his ministry throughout (John 1:32). The beloved disciple had heard Jesus teach that it was in order to gain the Spirit for his disciples that he was going to ascend the cross and return to his heavenly Father’s side: “[I]t is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Advocate will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you” (John 16:7). Then, as our Eucharistic Prayer so elegantly puts it: “And, that we might live no longer for ourselves, but for him who died and rose for us, he sent the Holy Spirit, his own first gift for those who believe, to complete his work in the world, and to bring to fulfillment the sanctification of all.”  

And, of course, John was there when Jesus gave birth to the church, and launched the worldwide mission: “[H]e breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained” (John 20:22b–23). This is God’s true testimony for us: that Jesus takes up residence within us by the Holy Spirit to make our hearts glad in the truths of his Word, and to fortify our will to live out those precious truths. 

Be blessed this day,  

Reggie Kidd+ 

What Is Love - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Tuesday • 5/6/2025 •
Week of 3 Easter 

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 26; Psalm 28; Daniel 4:28–37; 1 John 4:7–21; Luke 4:31–37 

This morning’s Canticles are: before the Psalm reading, Pascha Nostrum (“Christ Our Passover,” BCP, p. 83); 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 Third Week of Easter, and we are in Year 1 of the Daily Office Lectionary. “Alleluia! Christ is risen! The Lord is risen indeed! Alleluia!” 

Pride, a very bad idea. In Daniel 4, King Nebuchadnezzar’s pride and boasting results in the humiliation Daniel predicted from an earlier dream of the king. The boastful king is driven from human society. He becomes like a wild animal, with long hair and fingernails, eating grass like an ox. When at length he repents and acknowledges the Most High as the true and eternal king, he is restored to his throne, and he praises God: “I blessed the Most High,and praised and honored the one who lives forever. For his sovereignty is an everlasting sovereignty, and his kingdom endures from generation to generation” (Daniel 4:34). He confesses, “Now I, Nebuchadnezzar, praise and extol and honor the King of heaven, for all his works are truth, and his ways are justice and he is able to bring low those who walk in pride” Daniel 4:37). 

Image: William Blake, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons 

The first and deadliest sin is pride. It destroyed Lucifer. It robbed Adam and Eve of Paradise. But for the intervention of the King of heaven with his severe mercy, it nearly took down Nebuchadnezzar (“Is this not magnificent Babylon, which I have built as a royal capital by my mighty power and for my glorious majesty?” — Daniel 4:30). If, like the ancient king of Babylon, we “walk in pride” and the Lord’s love brings us low, may we be ever grateful.  

Love, a most excellent idea. John’s tribute to the love of God is best encapsulated in a series of propositions.  

Love is who God is. “God is love,” says 1 John 4:16. That is because God is an eternal fellowship of persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. That eternal fellowship is part of what John assumed when he wrote in his Gospel, “…the Word was God, and the Word was with God” (John 1:1). There is an impenetrable mystery to God’s being that Italian poet Dante memorably captured: “And I believe in three Eternal Persons. And these I do believe to be one essence so single and threefold as to allow both is and are” (Paradiso 24). What’s not a mystery at all, however, is that love is not an afterthought to God’s being, because God is inherently a relationship of love. God has always loved. God will always love, because it’s who he is.  

Love is what God does. Out of love, God created. Out of love, God sent his Son. And he didn’t send him for good people, he sent him for the likes of us. He sent him for bad people. He sent him as “hilasmos for sin” — that is, as a propitiatory sacrifice to satisfy justice and to avert the wrath (1 John 4:10). There’s no way around that uncomfortable truth. It highlights the amazing depth of the love of God. God loves sinners so much he sent his Son for them. To repeat, love is what God does.  

Love is what God works in us, and looks for from us. God does look for love from us, but he does not expect us to manufacture it from within ourselves. He gives us his Spirit to create within us his own reservoir of love: “By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit” (1 John 4:13). More and more, by the Spirit, the love that God is becomes who we are. More and more, by the Spirit, what God does out of love becomes what we do out of love.  

Love is how the invisible God becomes visible to the world. “No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us” (1 John 4:12). The reason the Second Commandment tells us not to make images of God is that God has already fashioned his own images: humans. “Let us make humankind in our own image, according to our own likeness…” (Genesis 1:26). We are the way the invisible God intends to make himself visible in the world he has created. We have been designed to mirror his creativity in the things we make. He made us to mirror his passions in our love for the good, and hatred for what is evil. And while we may construct cathedrals to call attention to his grandeur and beauty, many people will never step across the threshold of those buildings. For them, the only view of God’s grandeur and beauty is the way we treat one another.  

“Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God.” 

Be blessed in that love this day,  

Reggie Kidd+ 

John Keeps It Simple for Us - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Monday • 5/5/2025 •
Week of 3 Easter  

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 25; Daniel 4:19–27; 1 John 3:19–4:6; Luke 4:14–30 

This morning’s Canticles are: before the Psalm reading, Pascha Nostrum (“Christ Our Passover,” BCP, p. 83); 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 Third Week of Easter, and we are in Year 1 of the Daily Office Lectionary. “Alleluia! Christ is risen! The Lord is risen indeed! Alleluia!” 

1 John.  

Antichrist to come, and antichrist already. The early church understood that Christ’s victory over sin and death prompted a Satanic counterattack. Peter likens Satan to a mortally wounded lion in desperate, if deadly, death throes. Paul expects history to culminate in Christ dealing a final crushing blow to a “man of lawlessness” who will mount a final assault on God’s people. Paul also recognizes the “spirit of lawlessness” already at work in the world, and against which the church must strive until the end. John has an identical view: he predicts the rise of “antichrist” towards the end of history, whom Christ will dispatch at his glorious return. Like Paul, John sees this future evil already in play in the world, attacking the church through “many antichrists,” and operating under the influence of “the spirit of antichrist.”   

Christ “coming in the flesh.”  

Do not believe every spirit. That’s why it’s crucial, says John, for the church to discern the Spirit of God, the Advocate whom Jesus promised to send, and who would lead us into all truth. For the “spirit of antichrist” will speak falsities intended to lead us away from God and the life he has for us.  

One way to tell it’s the spirit of antichrist that we are hearing is when we recognize that it is advocating for “the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life” (1 John 2:15). That voice is all around us, encouraging, as we noted last week, the seductions of illicit physical pleasure (“the lust of the flesh”), of the idolizing of beauty (“the lust of the eyes”), and of the pride of building our “brand” (“the pride of life”—1 John 2:15b RSV). A dismissive attitude toward the church’s and Israel’s long history and experience that exudes the first deadly sin: pride. A politics of class and racial resentment that feeds the second deadly sin: envy. Making social problems about “systems” in such a way as to ignore the poison of the fourth deadly sin: sloth. An aesthetic that glorifies amassing wealth and that makes us effete snobs about everything we consume (“O dear God, I’d die before I drank rot gut coffee!”), surrendering, “in the day of slaughter” (James 4:5), to the fifth and sixth deadly sins: avarice and gluttony. A championing of sexual liberation that capitulates to the demands of the seventh deadly sin: lust.  

This is the commandment…  But in the end, John keeps it simple for us. There’s one commandment with two dimensions that he’d have us focus on: “Believe in the name of [God’s] Son Jesus…” (that is, the fullness of who he is and what he has done, is doing, and will do for us) “…and love one another” (thus fleshing out, almost as an extension of the incarnation, the reality of the eternal communion of love here on earth—1 John 3:23).  

Collect for the Third Sunday of Easter. O God, whose blessed Son made himself known to his disciples in the breaking of bread: Open the eyes of our faith, that we may behold him in all his redeeming work; who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen. 

Be blessed this day,  

Reggie Kidd+  

The Baptism Becomes a Sign - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Friday • 5/2/2025 •
Week of 2 Easter 

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 16; Psalm 17; Daniel 3:1–18; 1 John 3:1–10; Luke 3:15–22 

This morning’s Canticles are: before the Psalm reading, Pascha Nostrum (“Christ Our Passover,” BCP, p. 83); 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 Second week of Easter. “Alleluia! Christ is risen! The Lord is risen indeed! Alleluia!” 

Psalm 17. “Deliver me, O Lord, by your hand from those whose portion in life is this world” (Psalm 17:14). In concert, today’s Old Testament, Epistle, and Gospel readings urge us to consider the difference between having our “portion in life in this world,” and having it elsewhere.  

Daniel—Nebuchadnezzar’s statue of gold. Today’s account in Daniel chapter 3 of King Nebuchadnezzar’s construction of a colossal golden statue in his own honor stands in jarring juxtaposition to the account we have just read in chapter 2 about his dream of a golden headed, top-heavy statue.  

There’s continuity between the accounts, specifically in the theme of “gold” in each. In the dream of Daniel 2, Babylon is the kingdom of gold; the statue in Daniel 3 mirrors that fact, as the king portrays himself in gold. There’s discontinuity—in fact, profound incongruity—between the accounts when it comes to Nebuchadnezzar’s worship. Daniel’s interpretation of the dream leads Nebuchadnezzar to confess: “Truly, your God is God of gods and Lord of kings” (Daniel 2:47). Yet in the very next chapter, Nebuchadnezzar demands worship of himself. Nebuchadnezzar’s self-portrait in gold becomes a cautionary tale about having our portion in life in this world. Today’s text asks us to ask of ourselves if we understand the difference between haughtily setting our hopes on the uncertainty of riches, or humbly setting our hopes on God who richly provides (see 1 Timothy 6:17).  

Image: The Baptism of Jesus, stained glass, Cathedral Church of St. Luke, Orlando, Florida 

Yahweh will deliver from the king’s fiery furnace those who will not bow the knee (Daniel 3:19–30, tomorrow’s reading). To the credit of Daniel’s friends, it doesn’t matter to them whether the Lord will deliver them or not (Daniel 3:16–18). They know their portion in life lies elsewhere than in protecting their physical lives. Daniel’s friends get it right.  

1 John—living as beloved children, or not. “See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and that is what we are. The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him” (1 John 3:1). To John, two things mark the lives of people who live only for this world: lawlessness and sinfulness (1 John 3:4,8). By contrast, two things mark the lives of those who have been born of God and are therefore his children: they know they will be transformed into the likeness of Christ at his return (1 John 3:2–3), and they actively participate in Christ’s continuing destruction of the “works of the devil” in their own lives in this life (1 John 3:8b–10).  

The NRSV translation of 1 John 3:8, “Everyone who commits sin is a child of the devil,” is somewhat misleading. John’s Greek suggests what he means is that people who give themselves over wholesale to a sinful lifestyle are children of the devil. Everybody does “commit sin,” but not everybody surrenders their lives to it. That’s why John writes earlier, “if we do sin [which, by the way, we will — all of us!], we have an advocate with the Father” (1 John 2:1). What the Father calls for is that his children confess and turn from their sins (1 John 1:9). They will find him more than ready to forgive … and to cleanse. Today’s passage urges us, on the far side of acknowledging our need for forgiveness, to cooperate with Christ in his loving intentions for us by purifying ourselves, “just as he is pure” (1 John 3:3).   

Luke—who’s your daddy? In an artistic move, Luke notes John the Baptist’s arrest prior to Jesus’s baptism even though, of course, the arrest had to have taken place after the baptism. The effect of Luke’s editorial decision is to highlight the differences between Jesus’s relationship with his Father, and Herod Antipas’s relation with his family.  

Antipas’s father was Herod the Great, who had not only attempted to assassinate Baby Jesus, but he had also successfully assassinated a wife and several sons. All because he wanted to secure his earthly reign. His surviving children are no less ruthless, no less insecure. All they have to live for is this life, and they will remove every obstacle to their perceived happiness. The rivalry, therefore, among Herod the Great’s progeny is ugly. Herodias is daughter of Aristobulus, one of Herod the Great’s sons. She marries Philip, another of Herod the Great’s sons, only to divorce Philip so she can marry yet a third son of Herod the Great, Herod Antipas. The family of the Herods is a hot mess! And for pointing this fact out to Herod Antipas, John the Baptist’s reward is his arrest and eventual beheading. Here is a family whose portion in life is this world—and we know their portion will be more horrific in the next.  

All this drama gets thrown into relief—and is given perspective—by the baptism of Jesus. At his baptism, which is his anointing by the Holy Spirit as the King and Priest of God’s people, Jesus prays. He has not manipulated his way into his office. He has trusted his loving Father. Jesus receives words of approbation and love from his Heavenly Father. He is not insecure in his knowledge of who he is. He knows he is loved. He knows the power that will work through him for the task set before him.  

The baptism of God’s Son becomes for us both a sign of the beginning of the mighty works of God through Christ for our redemption, and a model of how to find our portion in life in the love of the Father who calls us his children: “Beloved, with you I am well pleased” (Luke 3:22).  

Be blessed this day, 

Reggie Kidd+ 

Abide in the Truth - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Thursday • 5/1/2025 •
Week of 2 Easter 

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 18:1–20; Daniel 2:31–49; 1 John 2:18–29; Luke 3:1–14 

This morning’s Canticles are: before the Psalm reading, Pascha Nostrum (“Christ Our Passover,” BCP, p. 83); 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. This is Thursday of the Second Week of Easter, and I’m grateful to be with you. “Alleluia! Christ is risen! The Lord is risen indeed! Alleluia!” 

Daniel. Here in Daniel 2 the statue in Nebuchadnezzar’s dream is top-heavy: weighty and valuable materials at the top, and strong but fragile materials at the bottom. All it will take to bring the whole edifice down is a blow from a single stone to its iron-clay feet. Scholars are not unanimous in their interpretation of Daniel’s interpretation of Nebuchadnezzar’s dream. But the simplest and most compelling one, it seems to me, sees the successive kingdoms as Babylon (gold), Media-Persia (silver), Greek (bronze), and Roman (iron and clay). Despite its aspiration to bring all people together under the pax Romana (a rule of law, shrewd administration, and military power), Rome’s attempt to “marry” different groups will prove to be brittle.  

God’s Messiah (the “stone…not cut of any human hands”—see 1 Corinthians 10:4) will strike a blow that will make the entire edifice of human grandeur fall. In its place will rise a new and eternal kingdom: “the God of heaven will set up a kingdom which shall never be destroyed, nor shall its sovereignty be left to another people” (Daniel 2:44).   

Image: Unknown author, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Luke. John the Baptist’s mission is to announce the dawning of the day Daniel foretold. Unique among the gospel writers, Luke names contemporary rulers of the pax Romana—from the emperor himself, to his provincial governor, to his indigenous puppet kings, to the collaborationist stewards of Jerusalem’s temple. John’s message is that all this apparent power and glory is shortly to be proven to be brittle as clay.  

At the heart of the Baptist’s proclamation of the need for a baptism of repentance is his persuasion that the day is right around the corner when God will turn things upside down, or rather, put things right side up again: “Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be brought low, and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough ways shall be made smooth” (Luke 3:5, quoting Isaiah 40:4).  

In anticipation of “seeing the salvation of God” (Luke 3:6), everybody must get ready—each person in their own way. Those who think themselves privileged by birthright or spiritual heritage must repent of their pride, and “produce fruit worthy of repentance” (Luke 3:8). At the same time, those thought to be automatically excluded from God’s favor—tax collectors and soldiers, for instance—they are invited to come to the preparatory waters. Not on their own terms, to be sure, but on God’s. They must turn from extortionist and predatory ways. The coming of Messiah means the kingdom of this world and its value system—most visibly expressed in John’s day in the enforcers of the pax Romana—is about to be overturned in favor of God’s rule of justice, righteousness, mercy, and love. Prepare the way… 

1 John. Beloved disciple and elder statesman of the church, John has seen a lamentable Satanic pushback in his churches. Jesus Christ, the Incarnate God-Man, has conquered sin and death on the cross, and has “thrown out” the ruler of this world in order to draw all sorts of people to himself (John 12:32). But a mark of the fact that this is “the last hour” is that the devil still has some fight in him. The devil wages war on the church (see Revelation 12). And his most effective strategy is to distort the truth of who the Messiah is, and create doubt and despair in the church. Thus, in John’s day and ours, the heretical emergence of “many antichrists” (false teachers, false leaders) in the church.  

In John’s day, the false teaching went along the lines of the “divine Christ” temporarily inhabiting the body of the “human Jesus,” so that you couldn’t say “Jesus is the Christ.” Such a split allowed the “divine Christ” to abandon the “human Jesus” on the cross, under the assumption that divinity could not be associated with death. Of course, that meant that there was no sacrifice for sin, nor was there need for such a thing. This teaching declared that knowing God really had nothing to do with the mundaneness and messiness of this life. Thus, following this reasoning, there was no need for confession of sin, and no need to adhere to the bothersome, meddlesome commandments of God.  

In our day, there’s probably no better representative of “antichrist”-thinking than that which Nobel Peace Prize winning missionary doctor Albert Schweitzer introduced in his Quest of the Historical Jesus. As a convinced modern secularist, Schweitzer could not conceive of an actual, physical resurrection. He believed that a thoroughly human Jesus died on the cross alone and in despair, crying out “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” The “historical Jesus” is lost to us, Schweitzer said, and is irrelevant to us anyway. He’s just dead and gone. What matters, he would say, is the “Christ of faith” who lives in our hearts and inspires us to be our better selves. That erroneous belief, it must be said, inspired Schweitzer to live one of the twentieth century’s most heroic lives: as a medical missionary to Africa, as a brilliant organist and scholar of Bach, and as a theologian of note. But underneath it was the spirit of “antichrist” that John saw in his day, and which he described as characteristic of living (as we continue to do today) in “the last hour.” 

Our job is straightforward: to continue to confess that Jesus and the Christ are one and the same person. In Mary’s womb, a unique thing took place: heaven and earth came together, and came together for good. The divine Second Person has permanently taken to himself the fullness of our humanity, has suffered for us, died for us, and has risen to life restored for us. He represents us now in heaven as a promise of what we shall be when he comes again in power and great glory. “Let what you heard from the beginning abide in you. If what you heard from the beginning abides in you, then you will abide in the Son and in the Father. And this is what he has promised us, eternal life” (1 John 2:24).  

Abide in this staggering truth, and be blessed this day,  

Reggie Kidd+ 

Knowing Him Reveals Mysteries - Daily Devotions with the Dean

Wednesday • 4/30/2025 •
Week of 2 Easter  

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 119:1–24; Daniel 2:17–30; 1 John 2:12–17; John 17:20–26 

This morning’s Canticles are: before the Psalm reading, Pascha Nostrum (“Christ Our Passover,” BCP, p. 83); 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 Second Week of Easter. We are in Year 1 of the Daily Office Lectionary. “Alleluia! Christ is risen! The Lord is risen indeed! Alleluia!” 

We discover in our readings this morning powerful insights about learning who we are in loving God and loving one another.  

Daniel receives revelation about Nebuchadnezzar’s dream. In today’s passage the king of Babylonian has seen “what will happen at the end of days” (Daniel 2:28). Because we are not reading the entire narrative all at once, we don’t learn the content of the dream today. Instead, today’s text shows us, first, Daniel’s praise and worship of “the God of heaven” (Daniel 2:19). Second, we see Daniel’s insistence before the king that it is not a special talent of his own that gives him the ability to perceive the dream and interpret it. As Daniel tells the king, “There is a God in heaven who reveals mysteries, and he has disclosed to King Nebuchadnezzar what will happen at the end of days” (Daniel 2:28). God is the giver of all good gifts (James 1:17).  

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

Only half of Daniel’s message to the king addresses the content and the meaning of the dream itself. More fundamental is the other half of Daniel’s message: “There is a God….” And not just any God! That God—Yahweh, Israel’s covenant Lord—wishes to be known in Babylon. The key to acquiring any wisdom, including wisdom about oneself, is through knowing him. It is only in knowledge of Yahweh, Daniel dares to tell the Babylonian king, “that you may understand the thoughts of your mind” (Daniel 2:30).  

As John Calvin notes at the very beginning of his Institutes of the Christian Religion, to know God is to know oneself, and the route to knowing oneself is to know God. Amen that! 

1 John. When we are very young in Christ, just beginning the journey of self-understanding, we first need to know forgiveness and the love of God as our Father (1 John 2:12a,14a). When we are early in the process of establishing our identities and our place in the world, we need to know the power of God to help us resist evil and live for Him (1 John 2:13b,14c). When we are older and have come to the place where others look to us for mature wisdom, we need to be able to draw on a lifetime of experience with Him whom we’ve known “from the beginning” (1 John 2:13a,14b).  

At every stage of life, we need to be on guard, says John, against the seductions of illicit physical pleasure (“the lust of the flesh”), of the idolizing of beauty (“the lust of the eyes”), and of the pride of building our “brand” (“the pride of life”—1 John 2:15b RSV). Pleasure for pleasure’s sake, art for art’s sake, and feeling superior to other people—these are the main elements of what it is to “love the world and the things of the world” (1 John 2:15a).  In the end, their charms are fleeting, and the love of the Father is not in them. And if we belong to Christ, they are not who we are! 

In John 17, Jesus prays for us, his church. Our Great High Priest prays that we will experience something that is more valuable, more lasting, and more real than anything else in the world: love for one another. Whether we are young or old, whether we wrestle with sins of the flesh or of the eye or of the ego, our true selves are to be found in giving ourselves to one another in the Body of Christ.  

God’s very being is an eternal communion of love between the persons of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. When we, Christ’s followers, love one another, we participate in that eternal communion. And when, in answer to Jesus’s prayer, we love one another, we come as close to making visible the invisible God as is possible for human beings: “I ask …  that they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me” (John 17:20a,21).  

Be blessed this day, 

Reggie Kidd+