Daily Devotions with the Dean
This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 89:1-18; Hosea 2:14-23; Acts 20:18-38; Luke 5:1-11
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)
Hosea. The Northern Kingdom of Israel has been enjoying decades of peace and prosperity. Unfortunately, these have also been decades of idolatry, immorality, and injustice. The prophet Hosea’s mission is to warn Israel that the days of “good times” are coming to an end, that the nation will be consigned to a horrible exile—but that the Lord will never stop loving his wayward people, and that in the end he will woo and win them back to himself.
Hosea’s mission is to embody the Lord’s message by imitating the relationship between God and his people. In these first two chapters of his book, Hosea is told to marry a prostitute, Gomer, and then to name her children “Scattered,” “Not Pitied,” and “Not My People” (Hosea 1:6-8). Once she—as she inevitably will—leaves him, Hosea is to go after her, and to redeem her out of the new, bad marriage into which she will have given herself. Then he is to rename her children “God sows,” “Pitied,” and “My People” (Hosea 2:22-23).
The Lord presents the restoration of the marriage of Hosea and Gomer as a parable of the way that he will re-establish his covenant with Israel on the far side of his judgment and Israel’s exile to, and enslavement in, Assyria. That day will be so wonderful it will be like a second exodus: “She shall respond as in the days of her youth, as at the time when she came out of the land of Egypt” (Hosea 2:15). She will no longer be married to the false gods (“Baal” means master-husband). Instead, she will be married once again to Yahweh: “I will take you for my wife in faithfulness, and you shall know the Lord” (Hosea 2:20). Let it be noted, by the way, that this “knowing” is one of intimate amore. And it will take place on an earth that will have been “re-Edenized.” His people will be a new “Eve” on a “new earth” where harmony will have been restored between humans and the animal kingdom; where “the bow, the sword, and war” will have been abolished from the land; and where the earth will “answer the grain, the wine, and the oil” (Hosea 2:18,22).
With the coming of Christ, whom the apostle Paul calls the “Second Adam,” the human story has taken a giant step towards that re-Edenized creation. The Groom has come for his Bride; he has paid the price to win her from her bad marriage to the law, sin, and death (Romans 7:1-6). The Groom has done so in order that he may, even in the now, be wed to his Bride the Church, and “that we may bear fruit to God” (Romans 7:4). Think about that! And he will come once again for final consummation, to bring her to the banqueting table, the Marriage Feast of the Lamb (Revelation 19:6-10).
In the meantime, our reading in Acts gives indications of what the fruitfulness of our present wedding to our Groom looks like.
Acts. Paul’s speech to the Ephesian elders shows the humility, emotional investment, and loving endurance that Christ’s love prompts: “You know how I lived the whole time I was with you, from the first day I came into the province of Asia. I served the Lord with great humility and with tears and in the midst of severe testing by the plots of my Jewish opponents” (Acts 20:19-20). Paul’s speech bespeaks the determination to see through to a good end one’s life calling: “However, I consider my life worth nothing to me; my only aim is to finish the race and complete the task the Lord Jesus has given me—the task of testifying to the good news of God’s grace” (v. 24). His speech demonstrates a loving regard for the well-being of those under his care: “Keep watch over yourselves and all the flock of which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers. Be shepherds of the church of God, which he bought with his own blood...In everything I did, I showed you that by this kind of hard work we must help the weak, remembering the words the Lord Jesus himself said: ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.’” (v. 29, 36). More than anything else, perhaps, Paul’s speech puts on display the deep-seated love that the Groom plants in the hearts of those who know what it is to be loved deeply and intimately by him: “There was much weeping among them all [at Paul’s departure]; they embraced Paul and kissed him….” (v. 37).
Luke. Peter’s experience of nets bursting with fish provides incentive to be attentive for, and ready to respond to, the Master’s voice. And it means, perhaps, being ready to respond even when it doesn’t seem to make sense. You get the feeling that Peter almost did an eye-roll when Jesus told him to put out his nets: “ Master, we have worked all night long but have caught nothing” (v.6). He adds (I paraphrase), “…but if you insist….” Peter is very surprised by the result of listening to Jesus and following his instructions. This incident can be instructive for us. When we hear his call, we might want to trust him and follow.
You never know when he’s going to say, “Let down your nets for a catch.”
Be blessed this day,
Reggie Kidd+
Daily Devotions with the Dean
This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 40; Psalm 54; Acts 15:12-21; John 11:30-44
Job 42 (a departure from the Book of Common Prayer—see Monday’s note)
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)
Job is restored. Despite appearances, the happiest part of the happy ending of the Book of Job is not the restoration of the sufferer’s fortunes (42:10-17). I don’t mean to minimize Job’s receiving “twice as much as he had before” (42:10). However, the real climax of the story lies in Job’s words to the Lord, “But now my eyes see you” (42:5b), and in the Lord’s words to Eliphaz, “And my servant Job shall pray for you” (42:8b).
“But now my eyes see you.” In his striving for an audience with God his “tormentor,” Job had dared to hope that after his death he might “see” God, and in him see his Advocate and Friend (19:25-27). Yahweh has done so much more than that. Yahweh has pulled back the curtain between heaven and earth, if only to show Job his own limitedness and Yahweh’s incomprehensibility. In doing so, God has permitted Job to see as much of Yahweh’s own self as a human can stand. Job has taken his place alongside Abraham, Moses, and Isaiah as those who have “seen” the invisible, eternal, and almighty God. And for Job, that is more than sufficient. As Peter Kreeft puts it: “Here God answers Job’s deepest heart quest: to see God face to face; to see Truth, not truths; to meet Truth, not just to know it” (Kreeft, Three Philosophies, p. 92).
“And my servant Job shall pray for you.” Throughout the Book of Job, his friends have mouthed many abstract truths about God. But the only person who has spoken directly to God is Job. Even if his thoughts have been confused, he has known to Whom to go with his confusion. God’s verdict is that Job alone has spoken truthfully. His friends, by contrast, have lobbed mortars of “truths” (we might say that they have fired off “Bible bullets”)—but they have not spoken truthfully.
So, now, the second thing that makes for a happy ending to the book is that Yahweh calls upon Job to pray for his friends. Ministry flows out of a real relationship with the Living God, not out of a lot of head knowledge about the idea of God. Here is a powerful anticipation of the Apostle Paul’s discovery that it is the consoled who can console: “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and the God of all consolation, who consoles us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to console those who are in any affliction with the consolation with which we ourselves are consoled by God” (2 Corinthians 1:3-4).
Jesus weeps. The Job story’s tenderness towards the friends is its own indication that there’s more to the God of Job than the high and mighty Tester of souls, spinner-outer of the stars, and manufacturer of Behemoth and Leviathan. That is what makes today’s account of Jesus at the tomb of his friend Lazarus so wonderful. God-in-flesh has tears sliding down his cheeks as he beholds the grief of Lazarus’s circle of friends and family. His heart is breaking for them, but Jesus feels something stronger as well (John 11:35). God-in-flesh shudders within himself in rage at what death does to God’s image-bearers. (Here please note that the NRSV is entirely too tame, twice offering “he was greatly disturbed in spirit” when the Greek in this passage really denotes rage! — John 11:33,38). And God-in-flesh has come to do something about it. He will take it all into himself when he is lifted up on his Cross. In advance of that, he stands with weeping friends and makes their sorrow his. He will not let them weep alone. He will cry with them.
What we learn from John 11 is that the God who weeps at the sadness of his friends, stays alongside each of us through burials, sicknesses, bouts of depression, spiritual turmoil, broken relationships, seasons of apathy or aloneness, sorrow at global unrest (as the date September 11 has reminded us ever since that blue sky Tuesday morning in 2001)—and he weeps with us. He sighs as you sigh, shudders as you shudder, and matches you tear for tear. As Jesus wept on the way to the tomb of his friend, people exclaimed, “See how he loved him!” So Jesus loves you now. And just as he called then, “Lazarus, come out!” so will he do for you.
Be blessed this day,
Reggie Kidd+
Noonday Prayer
Daily Devotions with the Dean
This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 50; Acts 15:1-11; John 11:17-29
Job 41 (a departure from the Book of Common Prayer—see Monday’s note)
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)
As we saw yesterday, Yahweh is reducing Job to the realization that he does not have the capacity to defeat the powerful and the proud: “Look on all who are proud, and bring them low; tread down the wicked where they stand. … Then I will also acknowledge to you that your own right hand can give you victory” (Job 40:11-12). As final proof of Job’s incapacity, Yahweh brings forth two untamable monsters, Behemoth and Leviathan.
Behemoth (literally, “Beasts”) is a huge vegetarian beast that lives in the marshes (40:15,21). It is powerful (“its limbs like bars of iron” … “if the river is turbulent, it is not frightened”), if not especially dangerous. Who could tame it (“can one … pierce its nose with a snare”)? Who would want to tame it? A strong strand of scholars’ commentary on Job suggests that the prototype for Behemoth is the hippopotamus. If so, the poetic imagery expands its proportions: “It makes its tail stiff like a cedar … It is the first of the great acts of God” (Job 40:19). The modern reader—well, this one, at least—can almost not think of a huge dinosaur like the brontosaurus or the stegosaurus. The Behemoth is an ancient curiosity of God’s inventiveness—its “why” and “wherefore” are beyond Job’s comprehension.
Leviathan, the main topic of Job 41, appears in other biblical passages as a terrifying and dangerous sea dragon (Psalm 104:26; Isaiah 27:1; Psalm 74:13-14—see also Job 3:8; 7:12). It’s curious to me that Peter Kreeft credits J. R. R. Tolkien with translating the Book of Job for the Jerusalem Bible, when Tolkien himself says that the only translation he managed for that project was Jonah (Peter Kreeft Three Philosophies of Life, p. 62; Humphrey Carpenter, The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien, p. 378). Still, the description of Leviathan in Job looks so much like Tolkien’s dragon Smaug in The Hobbit that it’s not difficult for me to imagine Tolkien finding inspiration from this text in Job:
Can you fill its skin with harpoons? …
No one is so fierce as to dare to stir it up. …
Who can penetrate its double coat of mail? …
Its back is made of shields in rows, shut up closely as with a seal.
Its sneezes flash forth light …
From its mouth go flaming torches; sparks of fire leap out.
Out of its nostrils comes smoke, as from a boiling pot and burning rushes.
Its breath kindles coals, and a flame comes out of its mouth.
Its heart is as hard as stone…
When it raises itself up the gods are afraid…
Though the sword reaches it, it does not avail,
nor does the spear, the dart, or the javelin….
The arrow cannot make it flee…
it laughs at the rattle of javelins. …
On earth it has no equal, a creature without fear.
Many commentators find the prototype of Leviathan in the crocodile—but if so, the poetic imagery leaves that point of departure in the dust. Here is a monstrously terrifying creature. Tellingly, for the lesson in humility that Yahweh is impressing upon Job, the description concludes: “It surveys everything that is lofty; it is king over all that are proud” (Job 41:34).
“Four days late…” There is only One who is powerful enough to conquer Leviathan, the deadly dragon. There is only One who is ancient enough to comprehend Behemoth, God’s oddity. That is the One who comes for Lazarus—the One who comes, as the gospel song by Karen Peck and New River says, “Four Days Late … and Right on Time.” (songwriters: Aaron and Roberta Wilburn):
The news came to Jesus: “Please, come fast,
Lazarus is sick and without Your help he will not last.”
Mary and Martha watched their brother die.
They waited for Jesus, He did not come,
And they wondered why.
The deathwatch was over, buried four days.
Somebody said, “He’ll soon be here, the Lord’s on His way.”
Martha ran to Him and then she cried,
“Lord, if you had been here, You could have healed him.
He’d still be alive…
“But You’re four days late and all hope is gone.
Lord, we don’t understand why You’ve waited so long.”
But His way is God’s way, not yours or mine.
And isn’t it great, when He’s four days late
He’s still on time.
Jesus said, “Martha, show me the grave.”
But she said, “Lord, You don’t understand,
He’s been there four days.”
The gravestone was rolled back, then Jesus cried,
“Lazarus come forth!” Then somebody said,
“He’s alive, he’s alive!”
You may be fighting a battle of fear.
You’ve cried to the Lord, “I need You now.”
But He has not appeared.
Friend don’t be discouraged,
’Cause He’s still the same.
He’ll soon be here, He’ll roll back the stone,
And He’ll call out your name
When He’s four days late and all hope is gone,
Lord, we don’t understand why You’ve waited so long.
But His way is God’s way, not yours or mine.
And isn’t it great, when He’s four days late,
He’s still on time. God, it’s great, when He’s four days late
He’s still on time …
“If you had been here…” An underappreciated, but wonderful, part of the story of the raising of Lazarus is contained in our reading today in John 11. As Jesus arrives in Bethany, Martha (sister of Lazarus) comes to meet him. Yes, this is the whining, complaining Martha of Luke’s gospel (“Jesus, can’t you get my sister Mary to help me? I’m doing all the work here all by myself.”) In our reading today, Martha says to Jesus, “If you had been here, my brother would not have died” (verse 21). At first glance, this looks like another complaint from the familiar faultfinding Martha we know from Luke. But there’s something different here. Martha goes on to express a belief that Jesus can bring Lazarus back to life. She is hesitant to dare to ask outright for that miracle. She cautiously hints instead: “But even now I know that God will give you whatever you ask of him.” (v. 22)
“Yes, Lord, I believe…” When Jesus tells her Lazarus will rise again, she’s not exactly sure what he’s telling her. It’s as if she can’t presume to hope for Lazarus’s death to be reversed. She hedges: “I know he will rise again at the resurrection.” And that’s when Jesus drops another of the “I AM” statements we find in the book of John. This one’s a bombshell: “I am the resurrection.” Those who believe in him, though they will die, they will live, Jesus says. He asks Martha if she believes this. And what we get from Martha is the clearest, most emphatic recognition of Jesus by anyone in the entire book of John: “Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world.” To grasp the import of this statement from Martha, we only have to compare it to Peter’s declaration in Matthew 16, where Peter says, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” And Jesus answered him, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven” (Matthew 16:16-17).
Martha recognizes Jesus as God even when a miracle seems far-fetched. Job never loses trust in God even when his own restoration seems unrealistic. What gifts these stories of faith are for us! Do we trust that he will always be “on time” for us? I hope we all do.
Be blessed this day,
Reggie Kidd+
Midday Eucharist
Daily Devotions with the Dean
This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 45; Acts 14:1-18; John 10:31-42
Job 39 (a departure from the Book of Common Prayer—see yesterday’s note)
This morning’s Canticles are: following the OT reading, Canticle 13 (“A Song of Praise,” BCP, p. 90); following the Epistle reading, Canticle 18 (“A Song to the Lamb,” Revelation 4:11; 5:9-10, 13, BCP, p. 93)
There is delicious irony in the juxtaposition of today’s NT passages.
Jesus is facing stoning for his claim: “The Father and I are one” (John 10:30). Stoning is the punishment for blasphemy, so his interrogators have heard him correctly. Jesus belittles their incorrigible unbelief by calling up Psalm 82:6. There, mere human judges are called to execute God’s own justice for the benefit of others, and thus to share in this aspect of God’s attributes: “I said, you are gods” (John 10:34, quoting Psalm 82:6). If the Bible is willing to dignify mere humans as “gods” when they have been given the “godlike” task and status of reflecting God’s image (an irresistible thought for ancient church theologians—a notion to pursue on another occasion!), how readily apparent it should be to Jesus’s opponents that Jesus’s words and especially his works (“signs”) confirm that he is even more than that: “from the beginning,” both “with God” and “God” (John 1:1).
Right in front of these spiritual dullards stands their “Good Shepherd,” (John 10:14), the physical embodiment of the prophet Ezekiel’s promise: “I myself will be the shepherd of my sheep, and I will make them lie down, says the Lord God. I will seek the lost, and I will bring back the strayed, and I will bind up the injured, and I will strengthen the weak, but the fat and the strong I will destroy. I will feed them with justice” (Ezekiel 34:15-16). To Jesus the Eternal Son, God the Father has given all judgment: “The Father judges no one but has given all judgment to the Son, so that all may honor the Son just as they honor the Father” (John 5:22-23).
The occasion for this entire dialogue is the Feast of Dedication (John 10:22), celebrating the 2nd century bc liberation of the Temple from the pagan and self-idolizing Antiochus Epiphanes, and the reconsecrating of the Temple to the service of Yahweh. How much more should people acclaim the coming of the One who has been consecrated by the Father (John 10:36) to raise up a new and better Temple (John 2:18-22)!
By contrast, in Acts 14 Paul and Barnabas must intervene to prevent blasphemous worship of themselves. It is a predicament revealing a sadly humorous aspect of Lystra’s history. Because of their miracle-making, Paul and Barnabas are misidentified as Zeus and Mercury. (The citizens of Lystra believed they had missed a visitation by those very deities centuries before, and they were determined not to let that happen again.) The apostles insist that they are simply human bearers of good news that comes from “the living God who made the heaven and the earth and the sea and all that is in them” (Acts 14:15). As Yahweh did with Job, they begin by pointing to the wonders of creation to help their audience reach proper conclusions about the relationship between Creator and creation: “… [God] has not left himself without a witness in going good—giving you rains from heaven and fruitful seasons, and filling you with food and your hearts with joy” (Acts 14:17). This teaching achieved only moderate success. The miracles of Paul and Barnabas were sufficiently impressive that some of the crowd continued to attempt to offer sacrifices to the apostles.
And then there’s Job. According to the NT Book of James, part of the dignity of human beings is that “every species of beast and bird, of reptile and sea creature, can be tamed and has been tamed by the human species” (James 3:7). Yahweh, by contrast, wants Job to understand the limits of humans’ dominion over the animal kingdom. The Lord puts before Job the characteristics of one exotic creature after another that defy human comprehension and control. The single creature mentioned that humans are able to domesticate is the war horse. However, even in this case, while humans may direct the war horse’s energy, humans can never understand where its fury for battle comes from: “Do you give the horse its might?” (Job 39:19-25).
In every other case, Job is confronted with incomprehensibilities in God’s design of his creatures. Why give the huge ostrich such impossibly small wings? Why the predation of the lion, the raven, and the eagle; yet the independence of the mountain goat, the wild ass, and the wild ox (or aurochs)? The list will continue in chapters 40 and 41 with the even more mysterious Behemoth and Leviathan. But the point is clear: although we humans have been given the mandate to exercise dominion under God, we will never understand some aspects of God’s own dominion over his creatures. God’s delight in variety will always outstrip our desire to control and to comprehend. And we should draw sound conclusions as regards our own lives. So much of Job’s own experience seems out of control. It is indeed unfathomable by any human accounting. Our faith in Yahweh must dwell in contentedness at never knowing everything there is to know about our own stories.
Which takes us back to Jesus as Good Shepherd and as God-Incarnate. It is good to learn to rest in the knowledge that what we can neither control nor understand, he can and does—and that, to our benefit.
Be blessed this day,
Reggie Kidd+
Midday Eucharist
Every Table is the Lord's by Ryan Tindall
Every Table is the Lord’s
By: Ryan Tindall
Book Review: Wirzba, Norman. Food and Faith: A Theology of Eating. 2nd Edition. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2019.
Humans are fundamentally eaters. And yet today, we as a culture give less thought to how we eat than perhaps at any time before in human history. We fail to answer the fundamental question of why we eat—that is, beyond the simple biological necessity—and instead make frequent trips to grocery stores and restaurants without answering or even thinking about these questions. Is this what Jesus pointed us towards when he told his disciples:
“Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing?”
Of course not. But, as is often the case in our Christ-haunted modern world, we have unwittingly and unintentionally done exactly what Jesus prescribed. Ironically though, we’ve accomplished this in a way that is the opposite of what Jesus intended when he preached to a world that encountered food scarcity in ways of which we cannot dream. Besides Jesus’ comforting admonition and Paul’s suggestion that whether we eat or drink, we should do all to the glory of God—as well as a few hair-shirted medieval saints who were more experienced than us in fasting—do we really think scripture and the Christian tradition have much to say about question, “how should we eat?”
Norman Wirzba, Professor of Theology at Duke Divinity, does. As both a theologian and agrarian, Wirzba wrote Food and Faith: A Theology of Eating. I’ve read Wendell Berry and Michael Pollan along these lines before. But Wirzba’s essential book explicitly ties what these writers and others like them have written to an expressly Christian theology, and in the process contributes to a Christian ecology and anthropology that seeks to see eating as fundamentally communal—trinitarian even—and in a way that breaks down the divides between human and human, human and animal, and human and nature, all of which starkly mark our modern condition.
Eating and the choices we make around eating communicate what we believe about the world. Eating is one of the fundamental ways that we take in and learn about the world. Our experience at the grocery store, novel as this experience is in human history, displays this—as we seek out brands which align with our values in order to consume the messaging they provide. We eat as consumers, essentially divorced—and Wirzba means divorced when he uses this word—from what we eat and those who provide it.
The alternative Wirzba points to is an eating life marked by fidelity and love. Do we care for cows and chickens as living beings with dignity, animals like ourselves? Or do we treat them as meat-producing machines, subject to wonton destruction? Love seeks the good of the beloved and sees everything around us as grace and gift, but to be divorced from the land, from animals, and from each other is to live in a state that is “fundamentally about securing one’s own needs and advantage” (23), a state of the war of all against all.
Self-centered eating, “divorced” eating, is then ultimately death—death to our air, water, and earth, undignified death to our animals, and death to ourselves among a plague of eating disorders and obesity. Wirzba’s understanding of food points to the interconnectedness of all these deaths as the product of our infidelity and divorce. This kind of death is only destruction, the kind which is, in Paul’s words, the wages of sin. But death is also part of eating faithfully: plants and animals must still die for us to eat and survive. This is precisely where eating is fundamentally eucharistic. When we partake of the eucharist, “take, eat, this is my body, broken for you,” we physically take Christ into us and his life becomes our nourishment and sustenance. To eat is to incarnate and resurrect the life of what you eat. In partaking of Christ, we become part of his life in this world. The protein and carbohydrates you take in become the building blocks and energy of your life. Faithful eating does not eliminate death. Faithful eating recognizes the trinitarian nature of life—the mutual indwelling and perichoresis that God and all life participate in—as well as the gracious necessity of resurrection. The life of what we eat is reborn in us, much in the same way that Jesus lives in us through the Eucharist.
How we eat is also fundamentally about justice: justice to ourselves, to our neighbors, to farmers, and to the poor. Obesity and unhealthful food are a unique threat to the poor, as these are the foods that are often the cheapest. The lack of fresh, healthy food is a particularly sad threat to the rural poor, who may find mass-produced, nutrient-lacking food as the cheapest and most convenient option, a tragic circumstance in a part of the country which one would think would be defined by its proximity to farms.
Living with the land and what it provides not only cares for the land, but it cares for the larger environment. Seeing our grocery stores easily stocked with summer berries, peaches, and corn in the middle of winter hides a heavy transportation price behind them, as we haul produce from the southern hemisphere to the northern. Indutrial farming, to produce the abundance of food necessary to keep prices as low as we would like, requires pesticides that are harmful to our bodies and the earth. It also requires labor so cheap it can only come from the migrant, just as it once had to come from the slave. The life of Christ in us can hardly ignore the plight of these. Christ cannot be paired with exploitation. Industrial farming also decreases food diversity, leading to depleted soil and a deficient diet. Our current circumstances show the truth in what Wirzba says of the tenuousness of our situation: “When the world is sown in only one or two crops, we are only one pest or disease away from total food disaster.”
What then is the answer? Scripture points us in a direction here, as it shows both the first man and last man in a garden. Gardening teaches us our interdependence with all things and produces humility. It forces us to be attentive, if we are to be successful, and creates a fundamental sense of membership with the earth and our fellow gardeners. We do not all need to be gardeners, but we should all be involved with our food, supporting local farms and farming. Wirzba even makes the striking claim that contempt for farms and farming is a refusal to engage with humanity’s vocation, placed as we are within this garden world (308).
Scripture also points us in the direction of Christ’s life on earth: our eating life should be marked by common meals and hospitality. The dinner table should be a place of reconciliation and communion. Meals should be met with wonder and thanksgiving—which would make saying grace, praying a benediction over the food, a time of authentic expression rather than rote practice. This should bring renewal to our sensory life, as we experience taste, smell, and touch in communion with God. However, this is not the only side to the redemption of food this side of paradise. This is because, eucharistic eating also requires sacrifice. The Eucharist remembers that sacrifice. Our eating life should be marked by sacrifice also—sacrificing our money to purchase food that is ethically-produced, sacrificing selfish eating, and sacrificing gluttonous eating, including the gluttony of being overly delicate about what we eat.
Food and Faith is a practical and radical book. To engage with it is to bring attentiveness and care to what we eat. It is to learn to eat sacramentally, from a perspective of wonder and grace. To engage with this book is to begin realize that every table is the Lord’s.
Do you have a reflection to share? We would love to feature creations from other parishioners - writing, art, music, photography, etc. - here on the Cathedral blog. Email your submission for review to communications@ccslorlando.org
Daily Devotions with the Dean
This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 119:49-72; Acts 14:19-28; John 11:1-16
Job 40 (a departure from the Book of Common Prayer—see Monday’s note)
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)
Job & the Problem of Evil. Throughout the Book of Job, Yahweh is there, and he is not disengaged. It’s not that he doesn’t listen; thus, he speaks from quite near us, within the very chaos (“the whirlwind”) that surrounds us (Job 38:3; 40:6). However, he would have us understand that his moral governance of the universe includes: a) things that appear to us to be evil or harmful or bad; and b) things that appear to us to be arbitrary or frivolous or meaningless. It is prideful to think that we can wrap our heads around it all, much less do a better job running things if we were in charge.
Yahweh’s final proofs will be the Behemoth (Job 40) and the Leviathan (Job 41), both of which are beyond human comprehension and control, and each for its own reason. I will compare their attributes tomorrow. But for today, notice the first half of chapter 40. The most dangerous idea that Job has flirted with is the idea that there is a law of justice that stands higher than God himself, and to which God must be held answerable.
God’s answer is basically that there is a pride in the human heart that you, Job, cannot fix: “Look on all who are proud, and bring them low; tread down the wicked there they stand… Then I will acknowledge to you that your right hand can give you victory” (Job 40:11-12,14). Here is OT scholar Bruce Waltke’s elegant summary: “Human beings cannot impose through irresistible power from the top on down perfect justice. God did not endow them with the power to impose a utopian state here and now (v. 14)” (Waltke, Old Testament Theology, pp. 942-943).
Evil sucks. Even so, in this fallen world it has its place in God’s governance. What makes him God is that his good governance allows for and works through the existence of evil in humans, and of harmfulness, arbitrariness, and frivolity in the natural world.
As he is beginning to understand all this, Job wisely shuts his mouth: “See, I am of small account; what shall I answer you? I lay my hand on my mouth. I have spoken once, and I will not answer; twice, but will proceed no further” (Job 40:4-5).
Not that Job leaves us with a counsel of despair. Not that silence in the face of the impossibility of attaining perfect justice means resignation to, or compliance with, the reign of evil in this life. No, it means simply giving up triumphalistic delusions about our own powers to right all wrongs, not to mention to dictate the terms of our “best life now.”
There is good counsel and helpful perspective in today’s New Testament readings.
John: Death & God’s Glory. Jesus Christ is the embodiment of God’s promise to put an end to evil once and for all, to overthrow death’s reign, and to end the long season of night that began in the Garden of Eden. John 11 chronicles one of the most magnificent displays of that promise in action. Jesus will proclaim himself in this chapter as “the Resurrection and the Life,” as proof of which he will raise his friend Lazarus from the dead.
But today’s reading in John is merely the preface to that story. Here we find Jesus, having been informed that his friend is in danger of dying, intentionally staying away long enough to make sure that Lazarus is good and dead: “Accordingly, though Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus, after having heard that Lazarus was ill, he stayed two days longer in the place where he was” (John 11:5-6). What nobody else knows, but Jesus does, is that Lazarus’s dying “is for God’s glory, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it” (John 11:4).
Hard to swallow though it may be, that truth has animated generations of believers in Jesus Christ. Knowing that no death died in him is final, we see our deaths—and all the “little deaths” that lead up to it—as ways that God’s glory and the Son of God’s glory come to light. It’s why we can say, with Thomas (minus the Eeyore-like resignation), “Let us go, that we may die with him” (John 11:16).
Acts: Suffering & the Christian Life. A remarkable thing happens at the end of the First Missionary Journey, as Luke describes it in the Book of Acts. Paul has received brutal treatment in city after city on the mainland of Asia Minor. His last stop is Derbe, where there turns out to be a good reception. Surprisingly—indeed shockingly!—Paul turns around and retraces his steps through Lystra, Iconium, and Antioch. He goes back to the cities from which he has been bounced, and in one case beaten and left for dead.
He has two purposes. The first is to explain that the sufferings that the new believers in these cities had seen in him are part of the “normal” Christian life: “They strengthened the souls of the disciples and encouraged them to continue in the faith, saying, ‘It is through many persecutions that we must enter the kingdom of God’” (Acts 14:22).
The second purpose is to put in place competent and godly leadership who can mold these new believers into churches, for worship, mutual support, and extension of the ministry: “And after they had appointed elders for them in each church, with prayer and fasting they entrusted them to the Lord in whom they had come to believe” (Acts 14:23).
What’s remarkable about Job is how much faith he exercises in the absence of the full revelation of “the Resurrection and the Life,” and minus the support of a community of faith to cheer him on. With so much more going for us on this side of the Cross and Resurrection of Christ, may we know that in whatever whirlwind surrounds us, the same Lord is still present, still hears our cry, and still speaks.
Be blessed this day,
Reggie Kidd+