Daily Devotions with the Dean
This is part of a series of devotions based on the Daily Office, which is found in the Book of Common Prayer.
This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 102; Exodus 2:1-22; 1 Corinthians 12:27–13:3; Mark 8:27–9:1
This morning’s Canticles are: following the OT reading, Canticle 14 (BCP, p. 90); following the Epistle, reading Canticle 18 (BCP, p. 93)
I went to bed last night heavy of heart. A person very dear to me who lives in the NYC area has symptoms that have led to her being tested for the coronavirus. And a friend’s brother who lives overseas has come down with the coronavirus. I went to sleep praying for them, only to wake up several times during the night praying for myself as well: “Lord, please, you can’t let me get sick.”
Mine must be the experience of many of us right now: hurting for others, concerned for ourselves. And it’s especially hard when the best thing we can do for each other is to keep away from each other. “Stay-at-home” sucks, but, ironically, it’s an expression of love.
This morning’s psalm hit like a ton of bricks: “…[M]y days drift away like smoke, and my bones are hot as burning coals” (Psalm 102:3). I was struck both by how close to home the psalmist’s situation is, and also by the fact that his spiritual instinct was to process the pain by writing a song to the Lord. The psalm’s superscription (not in the BCP, but part of the ancient received text, and included in printed editions of the Bible) says it all: “A prayer of one afflicted, when faint and pleading before the Lord.”
Psalm 102 is a masterful study in how to face a time like the one we are in.
First, the psalmist cries out to the Lord about how desperate his situation is (vv. 1-11): “I lie awake; I am like a lonely bird on the housetop … I wither away like grass” (vv. 7,11 NRSV).
Second, the psalmist expresses confidence that the Lord will “regard the prayer of the destitute, and will not despise their prayer.” The Lord will heal, and thereby bring glory and praise to himself (vv. 12-22):
18 Let this be recorded for a generation to come,
so that a people yet unborn may praise the Lord:
19 that he looked down from his holy height,
from heaven the Lord looked at the earth,
20 to hear the groans of the prisoners,
to set free those who were doomed to die;
21 so that the name of the Lord may be declared in Zion,
and his praise in Jerusalem,
22 when peoples gather together,
and kingdoms, to worship the Lord.
Third, the psalmist turns again to his own plight, contrasting his own fragility with the Lord’s eternality (vv. 23-28): “[D]o not take me away at the midpoint of my life, you whose years endure throughout all generations” (v. 24 NRSV). But then that last clause prompts an extraordinary turn. In the remaining verses of his song, the psalmist drops an “Easter Egg” of sorts. He celebrates God’s permanence in language that the New Testament will pick up centuries later to describe Jesus Christ, the Eternal Son whom God sends as Apostle and High Priest of his love: “[Y]ou are the same, and your years have no end” (compare Psalm 102:25-27 with Hebrews 1:10-12).
All the world’s pain—from the psalmist’s to yours and mine, indeed, the pain of everyone living now with the disquietude of a worldwide pestilence—has been taken up into the suffering and victory of God’s Eternal Son, our Lord Jesus Christ.
Be blessed. May the knowledge of that hope sustain you this day.
Reggie Kidd+
Noonday Prayer
Daily Devotions with the Dean
This is part of a series of devotions based on the Daily Office, which is found in the Book of Common Prayer.
This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 69; Exodus 1:6-22; 1 Corinthians 12:12-26; Mark 8:27–9:1
You never know on any particular day how God’s Word is going to grab you. That’s part of the adventure of praying Daily Morning Prayer.
Of course, the start of the book of Exodus is worth noting: Exodus begins the saga of the return home. Separation from the Garden leads to slavery. Israel’s exile under “taskmasters” in Egypt is a parable for the whole human condition of captivity under the dominion of sin, evil, and death. God is not going to leave his people under this oppression. As Eucharistic Prayer A puts it: “…and when we had fallen into sin and become subject to evil and death, you in your mercy sent Jesus Christ…to reconcile us to you….” The book of Exodus, we’ll see, is a telling of that story in advance.
But what stands out today is the last verse in the reading from 1 Corinthians: “If one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honored, all rejoice together with it” (12:26). Throughout this passage, the apostle Paul contemplates the “oneness” and the “manyness” of Christ’s Body the church. All baptized into one body, all drinking from the same Spirit. Unable to do life without each other. Everybody feeling everybody’s joy. Everybody feeling everybody’s pain.
A pandemic that is sweeping the globe—one manifestation of our being subject to evil and death—means we certainly are feeling everybody’s pain right now. It has to break our hearts to see so many lives upended, so many lives destroyed, so many futures seemingly sunk by this pestilence.
Knowing that we are all in this together provides focus to our prayers:
May the Creator God bless governing officials and health care providers and researchers, that a cure may emerge.
May the Redeeming God uphold mental health workers and all who provide spiritual care, that hearts may be strengthened until we see the subsiding of this pestilence.
Meanwhile, during this “stay-at-home order,” may the Lord who took on our flesh sustain and encourage the many in our community who are barely hanging on, who are struggling with finances, who have been sent home from school, who are lonely, afraid, stressed, or depressed.
May the Lord of Compassion shower his tender care on the weaker and more frail among us; may he pour out protecting, healing grace upon them.
May the Man of Sorrows be alongside each of us, and, by the Spirit of Life, may the hope of his resurrection sustain all of us. Amen.
Blessings on you this day.
Reggie Kidd+
Cathedral Offices to Close Wednesday Afternoon
Orange County and the City of Orlando have issued a “stay-at-home order,” restricting normal travel, work, and other activities in an effort to slow community spread of COVID-19. The order is effective Thursday, March 26 at 11pm until April 9 at 11pm.
Accordingly, Cathedral offices will close at 3pm on Thursday, March 26. Staff members, working remotely, will continue their support of Cathedral operations.
In-person services are still canceled. We will continue to stream weekday Noonday Prayer at 12:05pm and Sunday morning worship at 10:15am. These services, pre-recorded within the guidelines of the stay-at-home order, will be streamed on Facebook and YouTube. The services will also be available for viewing on our Cathedral blog (www.ccslorlando.org/blog).
Dean Reggie Kidd shares, “It breaks our hearts to see so many lives upended and destroyed by this virus. We pray God’s blessing on the efforts of governing officials and health care providers and researchers, of mental health workers and all who provide spiritual care, that we may soon see the subsiding of this pestilence. Meanwhile, during this “stay-at-home order,” we ask God to sustain and encourage with his love the many in our community who are barely hanging on, or who are lonely, afraid, stressed, or depressed. May the Man of Sorrows be alongside you, and may the hope of his resurrection sustain you. Amen.”
Noonday Prayer
Daily Devotions with the Dean
This is the first in a series of devotions based on the Daily Office, which is found in the Book of Common Prayer.
“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 media with oppressive and frightening words: pandemic … testing … economic collapse … hoarding … escalating deaths.
One way to resist the 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.
Without a prayer book, the smoothest way to take the “on ramp” to the Office online is through a ministry called Mission St. Clare, where each day’s Office is posted in its entirety (go to https://www.missionstclare.com or download the Mission St Clare app for your smartphone or tablet).
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.
•••
Yesterday’s Scriptures were: Psalms 97 & 99; Gen. 49:29–50:14; 1 Cor. 11:17–34; Mark 8:1-10
From yesterday’s reading in Genesis, specifically ch. 50, v. 29, “Then [Jacob] charged them, saying to them, ‘I am about to be gathered to my people. Bury me with my ancestors…’”
As Jacob contemplated his own death, his preeminent concern was to be “gathered to my people.” He had a hint, it would seem, that death did not destroy fellowship. These were the sort of hints that Jesus Christ would gather up into the great confession that our God is the God of the living and not the dead (Matthew 22:32)—and, by implication, of a family and nation that transcends death.
And so I pray for you this day, that you will know no fear of death, nor of ultimate separation from God or from loved ones. May you know, by virtue of Christ’s death and resurrection, your place in a family that is forever. May you know that for the faithful, “life is changed, not ended; and when our mortal body lies in death, there is prepared for us a dwelling place”—the gathering of a family unbounded by death — “eternal in the heavens.”
•••
Today's scriptures are: Psalms 101 & 109; Genesis 50:16–26; 1 Corinthians 12:1–11; Mark 8:11–26
A couple of brief observations from today’s passage in Genesis.
Joseph’s story closes out. Two strong notes stand out: forgiveness and an expectation for a homecoming. Genesis being a Book of “Beginnings,” these notes recall themes from the beginning of the story.
First, Jacob wants the story line of contention between his sons to turn to one of reconciliation—a reversal of the animosity between the first two sons of Adam: Cain & Abel. In the long run, hate will not win, love will.
Second, Joseph expects to end his days in Egypt, but he knows his ultimate destiny lies back in Israel. The human race has been excluded from the Garden for now—but our destiny is back home, not through fruitless efforts at replanting the Garden ourselves, but through God’s inexorable plan to restore all things and bring “a new heaven and a new earth.”
The larger story of reconciliation and homecoming that Genesis has begun continues (with tomorrow’s reading) in the book of Exodus.
My prayer for you this day: Lord Christ, where relationships are broken, please bring healing, forgiveness, restoration—where separation remains necessary, grant wisdom, patience, and freedom from bitterness and anger. If your children, Heavenly Father, feel disorientation, would you center them in your strong love and give them hope, a sense of their place in your family in the now, and a strong confidence in “an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven” (1 Peter 1:4). Amen.
Blessings on you this day.
Reggie Kidd+