Daily Devotions with the Dean

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 140; Psalm 142; Job 2:1-13; Acts 9:1-9; John 6:27-40

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)

In the first two chapters of Job, we learn some important lessons:

God is in control. Through the image of a heavenly court, we are led to understand that above the tumult here on earth, there is divine governance. The one who has identified himself as Yahweh (the Lord) is God over all. However, there are other spiritual personalities in the heavens, and they include a figure who is something like a prosecuting attorney, who takes a role that is like that of the Serpent in the Garden. His title is “The Satan” — “The Accuser” — and he is an adversary of the human race. 

Satan is not in control. One of the most important perspectives that the Book of Job communicates is that this “Satan” has only limited power. He is on a leash, and the leash is firmly in the hands of Yahweh. As determined as Satan is to do harm to humans, Yahweh turns those efforts to the benefit of humans and to the accomplishment of his own purposes. This is a perspective that flows throughout Scripture, culminating in the Book of Revelation where time and again evil happens only to the extent that “authority is granted” (e.g., Revelation 6:8; 9:3; 11:6; 16;9). 

One of the most difficult—and important—lessons of the Book of Job is that God is so good that, as Old Testament theologian Bruce Waltke puts it, He “transcends both…what people call good and bad. Within his government both have a place, all is good in that they serve his ‘plan,’ though the human creature cannot know it or understand it” (p. 942). 

A whisper of redemption. In a scene eerily reminiscent of the Garden, Job’s wife takes Satan’s side, with her denunciation “Curse God, and die!” Unlike Adam, Job resists. With his “No!” to evil, he says “Yes!” to God. Though his “Yes!” will be sorely tested, it will prove to be a true “Yes!” It will place Job on the side of God’s restorative plans for the whole human race. The evil that was first heard in the serpent’s hiss in the Garden and has been repeated here both in the heavenly courts and in Job’s home will ultimately be silenced. 

Friendship and “just being there.” Today’s passage introduces us to Job’s three friends. Throughout the rest of the book, they show themselves to be shallow, know-it-all fools. But for a week they act like true friends: they identify with Job in his pain, they share his grief, and they sit with him in silence (Job 2:12-13). If they had been better friends, they would perhaps have stayed quiet longer. Something for each of us to remember when we see a friend in pain: they need our presence rather than our platitudes. 

Hope’s reward. Clinging to hope by his fingernails, in Chapter 14 Job reaches toward a faith in final vindication: 

O that you would hide me in Sheol,    that you would conceal me until your wrath is past,    that you would appoint me a set time, and remember me! …

my transgression would be sealed up in a bag,    and you would cover over my iniquity (Job 14:13,17). 

Today’s accounts of Jesus’s appearance to Saul (in Acts) and Jesus’s self-declaration to the people as “Bread of Life” (in John) are a thrilling tandem. Saul’s zeal leads him at first to the rejection of God’s “set time” and the mystery of His “covering over of iniquity” in the unexpected death of the Messiah. But on the road to Damascus, the risen and ascended Jesus reveals himself in (literally) blinding light as the answer to the kind of hope that Job had refused to let go of. And Jesus astonishes his listeners by explaining that the bread their forebears had tasted in the exodus journey was merely a foretaste of an eternally satisfying meal that he himself both is (in Himself) … and brings (in the Eucharist). 

I pray you know, and cling with confidence to, that hope, no matter what. 

Be blessed this day,

Reggie Kidd+

Noonday Prayer

The Rev. Rose Sapp-Bax is leading Noonday Prayer today. You can follow along on page 103 in the Book of Common Prayer or online at www.ccslorlando.org/noonda...

Daily Devotions with the Dean

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 131; Psalm 132; Psalm 133; Job 1:1-22; Acts 8:26-40; John 6:16-27

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)

Following the monastic tradition of the Western church, the Daily Office has us read Job during the months of August and September. It’s an especially timely read right now. All of us feel like much has been stripped away. Graduations. Good times and easy conversations with friends in close quarters. Progress in race relations. General economic wellbeing. Church without masks. No fear of hugging or singing. Some of us have lost our livelihoods. Relatives and friends have lost their lives, or have come scarily close. None of us knows how long this COVIDtide will last. Campuses open, only to shut down almost immediately. What’s more, heading into what promises to be a noxious electoral season, none of us knows when any level of political comity and social goodwill will return. A lot has been, and is being, lost. 

A few things to pay attention to:

Job and faith. Job is our ally when our faith gets challenged by experience. Though he is “blameless and upright, one who feared God and turned from evil” (and there’s no reason to discount that language), all the props that seem to be signs of God’s blessings get stripped. Job has to face this question: Is God enough? Or has Job’s blamelessness just been too easy? We will see him flirt with disastrous ideas. We will see him rage against God. We will see him express brutal frustration with God and with His ways. But even though God will seem to shout him down at the end, actually, in the end God will commend him. God will tell Job’s friends: “You have not spoken of me what is right, as my servant Job has.” 

During this challenging season, I pray that all that comes against you gives you a more honest and direct line of communication with God. He can handle it. 

Job and friends. Indeed, we will watch Job contending with his friends and their shallow “plug-and-play” wisdom theology that says only bad people experience bad things. And we will see that while they will have done their theology only in the third person (that is, they never pray it), Job will have the honesty to take his complaints to God. The result will be that the Lord will finally tell the friends to ask Job to pray for them: “My servant Job shall pray for you, for I will accept his prayer not to deal with you according to your folly; for you have not spoken of me what is right, as my servant Job has done” (Job 42:8).  

During this challenging season, I pray that we are attentive to the ways that others around us struggle with a meaningful faith. They need us to do what Paul describes as “speaking the truth in love” (Ephesians 4:15). When that happens, as Paul goes on to say, “we…grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ.” 

Meanwhile, our study of Job will reveal the battle within his own soul to hold on to the initial confession he makes when hardship first hits: “‘Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return there; the Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.” The question is whether he—and by extension, you and I—will be able to hold on to that trust when things get worse and worse. 

Job & Isaiah’s Suffering Servant in Acts 8. Meanwhile, entertain the prospect that as an innocent sufferer, Job prefigures in some fashion the great Innocent Sufferer that Isaiah describes in his Suffering Servant song, and which Philip explains to the Ethiopian eunuch during the chariot ride on the road to Gaza. The Bible’s unique posture on suffering is that it is never ours to bear alone. Looking ahead, Job himself senses that he has an Advocate/Redeemer who will stand with him in his sufferings, and that death itself will not break the bond between them:

For I know that my Redeemer lives,    and that at the last he will stand upon the earth; 26 and after my skin has been thus destroyed,    then in my flesh I shall see God, 27 whom I shall see on my side,     and my eyes shall behold, and not another (Job 19:25-27). 

If only Job knew how that was going to come to pass—but we do! 

Job & Jesus and Food for Eternal Life. It is a hard lesson for Job—losing wealth and family and health as he does—but there is a glorious “far side” to the recognition that, as Jesus says in today’s gospel reading, there is one “food that perishes” and another “that endures for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you.” From Genesis to Revelation, this is the great message of the Bible. And as you read Job alongside John’s telling of Jesus’s life, I pray that this food indeed nourishes you with the life which is eternal. 

Be blessed this day,

Reggie Kidd+

Midday Eucharist

Thank you for joining us for worship! In union, O Lord, with your faithful people at every altar of your Church, where the Holy Eucharist is now being celebr...

Daily Devotions with the Dean

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 119:145-176; Judges 18:16-31; Acts 8:14-25; John 6:1-15 

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)

Looking for a moment past today’s readings, the last three chapters of Judges (chapters 19-21) recount two of the most lamentable events in Israel’s history: the rape, murder, and dismemberment of a Levite’s concubine (Judges 19); and then the near extinction of the tribe of Benjamin, which is stopped only through the forced appropriation of “the young women of Shiloh” (Judges 20-21). Under the judges, Israel’s lack of submission to Yahweh has led to a horrible spiraling down of the treatment of women. In the beginning of the era, Deborah is a great hero. But then Jephthah sacrifices his daughter to a rash vow (11:34-40), and the book ends (though the Daily Office will not have us read) this appalling account of rape, murder, and dismemberment (Judges 19-20). The violence done to women in these last chapters of this sad book is illustrative of the death wish of a people chosen to be “married” to God: “On that day, says the Lord, you will call me “My husband” (Hosea 2:16).   

The whole book leaves us longing for a better day, and more importantly, a better Savior, who is: 

• even more “left-handed” than Ehud—"left-handed” enough to win by being pierced rather than piercing

• able to sing a better song than Deborah’s (see Hebrews 2:12)

• more valiant, and more trusting than Gideon

• given in reality, unlike Abimelech, to his Father’s kingship (proving himself thus worthy of kingship)

• stronger than Samson—strong enough to be like us in all ways “yet without sin,” strong enough to pull down the twin pillars of sin and death. 

When we read today’s Judges passage in the light of today’s passages in John and Acts, we can rejoice that a better Savior, and a better day, have come. 

Judges 18 and John 6. Judges 18 recounts the descent of Moses’s line, as Moses’s great-grandson Jonathan chases the “bigger steeple” of (idolatrous!) service to the Danites. Acts 8 tells the sad tale of Simon the sorcerer who wants to monetize his newfound faith in Christ. 

Praise be to God, John’s gospel presents us, by contrast, with Jesus, the true King. As Israel’s true King, Jesus provides nourishment for his people, multiplying two fishes and five loaves into food enough for 5,000, with 12 baskets of leftovers. He refuses a crown on the people’s terms (John 6:15), but he will nonetheless acknowledge to Pilate (before his “coronation” on the cross) that he is indeed a King, simply “not from here” (John 18:36). 

Praise be to God, John’s gospel presents us with Jesus, the true Husband. Jesus has already done his first sign at the wedding in Cana, in anticipation of the wedding feast he will enjoy with his Bride the Church at the end of the age (Revelation 19). Now, in John 6 Jesus launches the Eucharistic Feast. He takes the loaves, gives thanks over them, and distributes them (John 6:11). Then he proceeds to explain how he is himself the Bread from Heaven (John 6:22-51), and that he will be present to his people in the eating of the bread (John 6:52-58)—provision for their ongoing journey on the way to the feast of the wedding of the Lamb. 

Judges 18 and Acts 8. The Danites (who are from Judah in the south) commit violence against their brothers and sisters in the north. Not only so, they establish a center of idolatry that will become one of the centerpieces of the religious divisions within God’s people. God intends his worship to be consolidated: first, in Shiloh with the ark of the covenant, then later in Jerusalem, with the temple. When the kingdom is divided after Solomon, Dan will become one of the northern outposts of spiritual rebellion and social rupture. 

In the Book of Acts, the division between the Southern Kingdom of Judah (centered in Jerusalem) and the Northern Kingdom of Israel (centered in Samaria) is being healed through the gospel. That is why the Holy Spirit does not fall upon the new believers in Samaria in the beginning of Acts 8, when Philip initially brings the gospel to them. The apostles in Jerusalem must send church leaders Peter and John to Samaria. Only then do the Samaritans receive the baptism of the Holy Spirit, because the Jerusalem church needs to understand that the same Spirit that dwells among them dwells among the Samaritans—they are one body, one people, one fellowship, one citizenship. 

Under King Jesus, ruling now by the power of the Holy Spirit, the gospel is being unleashed as a power that heals ancient divisions. What Paul is eventually to call “the Israel of God” is made up of Jew and Gentile, Jerusalemite and Samaritan (and, by extension, Orthodox and Catholic and Protestant). 

The takeaway here is that Christ has died for one church, not for a myriad of sects. He has died for one people with one allegiance, not for separate tribes with mixed loyalties. I pray that you and I live into the reality of our confession of “one holy catholic and apostolic church.” 

Prayer for the Church (BCP, p. 816) 

Gracious Father, we pray for your holy Catholic Church. Fill it with all truth, in all truth with all peace. Where it is corrupt, purify it; where it is in error, direct it; where in any thing it is amiss, reform it. Where it is right, strengthen it; where it is in want, provide for it; where it is divided, reunite it; for the sake of Jesus Christ your Son our Savior. Amen.

Be blessed this day, 

Reggie Kidd+

Midday Eucharist

Thank you for joining us for worship! In union, O Lord, with your faithful people at every altar of your Church, where the Holy Eucharist is now being celebr...

Noonday Prayer

The Very Rev. Dr. Reggie Kidd is leading Noonday Prayer. You can follow along on page 103 in the Book of Common Prayer or online at www.ccslorlando.org/noond...

Daily Devotions with the Dean

Monday • 8/17/2020

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 106:1-18; Judges 17:1-13; Acts 7:44–8:1; John 5:19-29

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)

In those days there was no king in Israel; all the people did what was right in their own eyes. — Judges 17:6; 19:25 (see also 18:1; 19:1). This verse brackets the closing stories in Judges; and the half verse (“There was no king in Israel”) serves as a twice-repeated refrain. Though granted the land of promise, Israel has refused to accept Yahweh as their king. “They have not rejected you,” Yahweh will eventually say to Samuel (the last of the judges), “but they have rejected me from being king over them” (1 Samuel 8:7). 

Today’s passage from Judges sheds light on what happens to people’s lives when Israel’s Lord is not lord of their lives: 

• A mother is victim of embezzlement at the hand of her own son. But then the mother is herself complicit in Israel’s sin: she commits idolatry when she underwrites the casting of an idol to Yahweh. 

• The son bears the auspicious name Micah, which means “Who is like Yahweh?” Ironically, though, in violation of God’s prohibition of graven images “like Yahweh,” he builds a personal shrine to house the idol to Yahweh, along with an ephod and teraphim for divining. Initially, he establishes one of his sons as priest, and later hires a wandering Levite instead. Essentially, he thinks he’s bought God’s favors with a lucky rabbit’s foot: “Now I know that the Lord will prosper me, because the Levite has become my priest” (Judges 17:13).  

• This young Levite should have been living in one of the Levitical towns in Judah where he is from. But he has headed north, seeking, it appears, his fortune. “Levite-for-hire” is far from God’s requirement for him to be a guardian of the holy things of Yahweh. Instead, he has abandoned Yahweh to minister before idols. We find later that this vain and greedy Levite is Moses’s great-grandson Jonathan (Judges 18:30). His fall is emblematic of Israel’s demise into spiritual apostasy and moral decay. 

The burden of the Book of Judges is to make us yearn for a better day. 

Happily, that day has come: 

“Very truly, I tell you, anyone who hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life, and does not come under judgement, but has passed from death to life” — John 5:24. Hope for the restoration of all broken relationships lies in the mutual love and exchange of honor between Jesus Christ the Son of God and his Heavenly Father. Even death—the just verdict against all sin and the breaker of all relationships—yields to the “voice of the Son of God” (John 5:25). 

In Jesus, everything that the Book of Judges has described as broken has been restored. Jesus provides for his mother even from the Cross (John 19:25-27); and at his resurrection he commissions a woman to be “apostle to the apostles” (20:11-18). As God’s very Son, Jesus presents a true image of God: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1:1). He is, as the hymn says, “Word of the Father, now in flesh appearing.” And rather than use his own priestly status for self-service, he “lays down his life for his friends” (John 15: 13). 

But filled with the Holy Spirit, he gazed into heaven and saw the glory of God and Jesus standing at the right hand of God. “Look,” he said, “I see the heavens opened and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God!” — Acts 7:55-56. Because the new day has come in Jesus’s life, death, and resurrection, even a story like Stephen’s martyrdom becomes a story of hope. Although the narrative of God’s redemptive love meets opposition, Stephen knows his Savior has it under control. We the readers are introduced to Saul, who is complicit in the stoning of Stephen. He will become the centerpiece of the account of the gospel’s progress in the rest of the Book of Acts. And, finally, we learn that “a severe persecution” begins against the church in Jerusalem, the force of which will start the dispatch of Christ’s witnesses from Jerusalem and Judea to Samaria (Acts 8:4-25) and to the ends of the earth (Acts 8:26-40, and most of the rest of Acts). 

Be blessed this day, 

Reggie Kidd+

Sunday Worship

Join us as we worship together virtually. The service is led by The Very Rev. Dr. Reggie Kidd and the sermon is delivered by The Rev. Peter Tepper. You will ...

New Children's Ministry Director: Lindy Zepp

We are pleased to announce that Lindy Zepp has accepted the position of Cathedral Children’s Director.  Many of you already know Lindy, her husband Kris, and their three boys (Magnus 10, Augustus 7, Atlus 4), but here is a bit more about the Zepp family.

The Zepp family came to our Cathedral two years ago when Kris’ career transitioned from firefighting in Jacksonville to water mitigation/restoration in Orlando.  Having attended an Anglican church in Jacksonville, they decided to check out the Cathedral and quickly determined it was their church home. 

The Zepps have loved being a part of a small group on Wednesday nights and participating in the Cathedral Kids ministry.  Kris and Lindy completed Canon Bales’ Confirmation class this past Winter and were on track to be confirmed Easter Sunday before it was postponed by the Covid-19 pandemic.  “From the beginning,” Lindy says, “everyone made our family feel so welcome and we were very grateful for that.  It has been great getting to know this congregation and I am very excited to partner with parents in serving our precious children.”

Lindy attended Bryan College in Dayton.  She homeschools Magnus and Augustus through the Circle Christian School hybrid program and Atlus attends Monarch Learning Academy. Lindy enjoys running a small business that advocates for artisans in vulnerable parts of the world through selling handmade, fair trade accessories. She is an Enneagram 7.

Please join us in welcoming Lindy to the Cathedral Staff Team!

Daily Devotions with the Dean

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 102; Judges 14:20–15:20; Acts 7:17-29; John 4:43-54

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)

Chapters 15 and 16 of the book of Judges complete Samson’s story (the OT readings for today, tomorrow, and the next day). I’ll make a few summary observations, and leave it to you to read the chapters, as time and opportunity permit. 

Samuel’s story is narrated at more length than any of the other judges, and he is one of the most puzzling figures in all of Israel’s history. Ironically, he mirrors the enigma of Israel itself. The book of Judges offers its own conclusion of the woeful period it describes: “every man did what was good in his own eyes” (Judges 21:25 RSV). And if it were ever true of any person, it is true of self-willed Samson: “I did it my way.” 

Nazirite vows are voluntary (Numbers 6)—but not for Samson; he is called to it while in the womb. In the same way, Israel is chosen by God: “For you are a people holy to the Lord your God; it is you the Lord has chosen out of all the peoples on earth to be his people, his treasured possession” (Deuteronomy 14:2). And Samson and Israel both handle their calling equally badly. 

Samson cavalierly and repeatedly violates his Nazirite vow. He touches a carcass (Judges 14:5-9; 15:15), he drinks wine (14:10), and he allows his hair to be cut (16:16). His vow-breaking is a mirror of Israel’s serial covenant violations. 

Old Testament scholar Bruce Waltke poignantly describes Samson’s spirituality: “The spirit of I AM overwhelms him four times (13:25; 14:6, 19; 15:14), more than any other warlord (3:10; 5:34; 11:29), marking him as the most charismatic but not as the most in tune with God’s Spirit” (An Old Testament Theology, p. 612). His birth is as auspicious and promising as Moses’s and Samuel’s. He is spiritually cheered on by a godly woman, his mother. But Samson’s heart is captured by three self-serving pagan women: his wife (Judges 14), a prostitute (Judges 16:1-3), and his infamous lover Delilah (Judges 16:4-20). “He flounders in the great conflict between eros and charisma,” summarizes Gerhard von Rad (Old Testament Theology, Vol. 1, p, 334). Likewise, Israel constantly seesaws between loyalty to the invisible and holy Yahweh and prostration before the earthy Baals and Asherahs of storm and fertility. 

Samson’s rebellion against God’s call on his life results in his being captured, blinded, and cast into a dark prison. Israel’s refusal to love God and keep covenant with him will result in her spiritual blindness (“Stupefy yourselves and be in a stupor, blind yourselves and be blind!” —Isaiah 29:9), and in her being sent into the darkness of Assyrian and Babylonian exiles.  

When Samson comes to the end of himself, he prays. First, he prays for life (Judges 15:18-19), and at the end he prays for death (Judges 16:30). Israel’s story is a continual cycle of rebellion, repentance, restoration. Her great prophets will long for and look to a final restoration when the Spirit will not just temporarily come upon people (as with Samson), but will permanently take up abode within them—when the Spirit will not merely steer stubborn wills, but remold resistant hearts to will God’s will: “A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you; and I will remove from your body the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. I will put my spirit within you, and make you follow my statutes and be careful to observe my ordinances” (Ezekiel 36:26:27). 

In the end, Samson, despite himself, fulfills his calling to “begin to deliver Israel from the hand of the Philistines” (Judges 13:5). He is permitted to prefigure—if in a diminished way—One who will give his life for the rescue of his people. Samson stretches out his arms to pull down the pillars of the pagan temple (Judges 16:29), anticipating Christ stretching out his arms on the Cross (Colossians 2:14-15, for example). But the difference in their prayers is telling. Samson prays, “Strengthen me only this once, O God, so that with this one act of revenge I may pay back the Philistines for my two eyes” (Judges 16:28). Jesus prays, “Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing” (Luke 23:34). 

I pray you may rejoice in that forgiveness. 

Be blessed this day, 

Reggie Kidd+