Daily Devotions with the Dean
This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 38; Song of Songs 2:1-7; Revelation 8:1-13; Luke 10:17-24
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)
Love’s “already” and “not yet” in the Song of Songs. The best way to take today’s verses in Song of Songs, I think, is as a dreamlike reverie. Our female singer recalls an exchange of compliments between herself and her beloved: he has compared her to a lily among brambles, she has compared him to a fruit-bearing tree among plain forest trees that bear no fruit. She recalls his having set a lavish place for them in his “house of wine,” where he has even hung a banner proclaiming his love for her. As the RSV rightly renders 2:4: “He brought me to the banqueting house, and his banner over me was love.” She recalls the overwhelming sensory delight of the food and of the wine … and of being held in his arms.
But at the moment he is absent, though the text does not explain why. Nevertheless, the text takes us inside the ache that love’s touch has awakened in her. And she speaks to her female companions—whether literally or in her reverie: “By the heavens (“gazelles” and “wild does” are terms that in Hebrew look like euphemisms for “mighty ones” who make up the “army of hosts” of the Lord of hosts), don’t awaken love before its time.”
This last note—this plaintiff, poignant yearning for love—becomes a theme in the Song of Songs. It will be sounded twice more in the Song of Songs—here at 2:7, and then also at 3:5 and 8:4. Each time, love’s yearning is answered by the arrival of the beloved (2:8; 3:6-7; 8:5).
Jewish and Christian interpreters alike have found themselves irresistibly contemplating the “already” and “not yet” dynamic of God’s relationship with his people in these verses. The Targum (an Aramaic translation of the Bible) suggests that the “lovesickness” expressed in the Song refers to the longing of displaced Jewish people for their homeland; even so, sings Diaspora Israel, “I received the banner of His commandments over me with love.” For their part, Christians have known an Incarnate Lord who has healed the leper and the lame and the blind and the dead. Jesus has allowed his own body to be raised on a cross as a banner of God’s love. Now, even in the absence of his physical presence, he has promised to be nonetheless present by his Spirit at the Eucharistic Banqueting Table, where believers proclaim his death “until his coming again” (1 Corinthians 11:26).
There is perhaps no better juxtaposition of love’s “already” and love’s “not yet” than in the pairing of today’s Gospel reading with today’s reading from Revelation.
Love’s “already” in Luke. In Luke, the seventy whom Jesus has sent out return with such amazing reports of God’s healing power that they have seen demons submit to them. Jesus tells them that while they were ministering, “I watched Satan fall from heaven like a flash of lightning” (Luke 10:18). And it’s altogether telling that Jesus reminds his disciples that the greater blessing by far is that their names are written in heaven—a place at the Table of the Messianic Banquet is more important than the level of power they manifest in this life. “Blessed are the eyes that see what you see!” Here is love’s “already”—the kiss from heaven. “For I tell you that many prophets and kings desired to see what you see, but did not see it, and to hear what you hear, but did not hear it” (Luke 10:23b-24).
Love’s “not yet” in Revelation. In Revelation 5, Jesus Christ, portrayed as the Lion of Judah who has been slain as a Lamb, comes forward as being the only one who is worthy to unroll the scrolls of history. In chapters 6 & 7, he unrolls the first six scrolls; and they tell a tale of judgment. That brings us to today’s reading of Revelation 8. In this chapter, there is a pregnant pause as Jesus opens the seventh seal: “there was silence in heaven for about a half an hour.”
Something extraordinary happens during this half an hour. Judgment will continue; that is why seven trumpets are distributed to seven angels. But just then, before the blowing of the trumpets, an angel with a golden censer appears before the altar:
he was given a great quantity of incense to offer with the prayers of all the saints on the golden altar that is before the throne. And the smoke of the incense, with the prayers of the saints, rose before God from the hand of the angel. Then the angel took the censer and filled it with fire from the altar and threw it on the earth; and there were peals of thunder, rumblings, flashes of lightning, and an earthquake (Revelation 8:3b-5).
Ever since Revelation 6:10, the martyred saints have been crying out “How long?” before the Lord metes out justice on the earth. “How long” must the “not yet” of our redemption go on? Now, here in Revelation 8, we see that the prayers of the saints accompany the trumpets of judgment. In our further reading in Revelation we shall see that God is sovereignly at work. He intends to bring final judgment against all that is evil and to bring Christ’s Bride through it all. And at one and the same time, what God is sovereignly and, I would submit, lovingly doing toward that end, he does in response to our prayers, rising upon the incense.
Worship, once again, takes center stage for us. In the context of the Song of Songs, our participation in the Eucharist is a celebration of love that has already been shown us in Christ. In the context of Revelation, our participation in the ministry of prayer is an anticipation of love’s conquest of evil and the preparation of the Marriage Feast of the Lamb.
Be blessed this day,
Reggie Kidd+
Midday Eucharist
Daily Devotions with the Dean
This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 26; Psalm 28; Song of Songs 1:9-17; Revelation 7:9-17; Luke 10:1-16
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)
Love has its own reasons. I compare you, my love, to a mare among Pharaoh’s chariots — Song of Songs 1:9. Some images in the Song are impenetrable to us nearly 3,000 years after the fact. This one, however, seems to be identifiable. Egyptian charioteers would make sure that all of their horses were stallions—that is, male horses. The danger of mixing in mares (female horses) is that, if perchance a mare came into season, chaos would ensue. In the song, the beloved (the male lover) says that he is so strongly attracted to the woman that his feelings are virtually uncontrollable. Her beauty is irresistible to him.
For her part, her lover’s very scent (which she likens to nard, myrrh, and henna) takes her to a garden spot—to an oasis (which is what En-Gedi is) in the wilderness, she says, or to a forest of pungent pines and cedars. It’s as though, when they are together, Eden has been recreated. They can explore a rediscovered innocence and delight in each other.
Jewish and Christian interpreters were convinced that this bracing paean to human love is in the Bible because it bears meaning for divine love as well. Believing that the Temple’s sights and smells (cedar and incense) were designed as a sensory recalling of the Garden of Eden, these interpreters (and I think with good reason) ask us to imagine the place of worship as a place in which the Lord and his people express their “takenness” with each other.
Odd as it may sound at first, there’s something about the Lord’s love for his people that is beyond rational calculation and covenantal obligation. In Deuteronomy, the only accounting that Yahweh is able to give for his fondness for his people is: “I love you because I love you” (Deuteronomy 7:8). In terms of the Song, the Lord is like the stallion who discovers a mare among the chariots. Conversely, what is to be called up from us, his people, involves, of course, discipline of will and formation of mind—but at bottom, it is “love,” something that is more visceral, something that is irresistibly attracted to what the psalmist calls “the beauty of holiness” (Psalm 96:9). That’s something that strikes me every time I walk into the Cathedral where it is my privilege to worship, and breathe in the incense-laden air from decades of worship there.
The glory of worship. Amen! Blessing and honor and glory…! Amen! — Revelation 7:12. The Book of Revelation is brutally honest about the devastation and suffering that Planet Earth suffers on the way to its final, complete, redemption. But it is terribly important to remember all along that the story line is moving toward consummation: toward the Marriage Feast of the Lamb (Revelation 19) and toward a New Jerusalem under New Heavens and on a New Earth (Revelation 21-22). It is equally important to remember that all along the way to that consummation, the people of the Lamb anticipate it with exuberant, lavish, loving praise, as in today’s reading from Revelation. We worship as though that which is “not yet” (the end of death and decay and suffering) were “already.”
Revelation’s perspective is precisely that of the Song of Songs, where the consummation of love is both longed for (from tomorrow’s reading: “do not stir or awaken love until it is ready”—2:8) and already experienced (again, from tomorrow’s reading: “he brought me to the banqueting house”—2:4).
Herein lies the glory of worship. Because our Shepherd-Husband will one day “guide us to the springs of the water of life” (Revelation 7:17), we submit in the “now” to the waters of baptismal cleansing. Because one day we “will hunger no more, and thirst no more” (Revelation 7:16), we taste already the Bread and the Wine. And because in the day of the great settling of accounts “God will wipe away every tear from our eyes,” even our funeral services become forward-looking celebrations of resurrection. As the Prayer Book says, “Yet even at the grave we make our song: Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia.”
Be blessed this day,
Reggie Kidd+
Noonday Prayer
Daily Devotions with the Dean
This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 25; Song of Songs 1:1-7; Revelation 7:1-8; Luke 9:51-62
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)
Song of Songs 1:2-4: Love & desire. Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth! For your love is better than wine — Song of Songs 1:2. These are not the sort of words with which one expects a book of the Bible to begin, are they? But they are a marvelous keynote for this “best of songs”: the main voice throughout this book will be that of a woman who yearns for the loving embrace of her beloved.
“There is something dreamy about these opening lines of the Song,” says Old Testament scholar Ilana Pardes (The Song of Songs: A Biography, p. 1). If you can read Hebrew, you will recognize the luscious “sh” sound predominating in the first two lines; in the opening paragraph, the voice vacillates between the woman’s speaking of her lover in the third person, and her addressing him in the second person; we are never quite sure exactly where we are, as the scene changes from intimate, private space to outdoor, festive space; we aren’t quite sure either whether her lover is an actual king, or whether her love makes him seem like one. As Pardes says, “It is a dream zone—nothing is completely discernable—everything is deeply felt.”
Going forward in our study, I’m OK with that. “Everything is deeply felt.” That is one of the primary take-aways from this book. Those of us who have been around church long enough have been taught that biblical love is agape-love, and that agape-love is primarily about “giving” and not “feeling” (or eros-love). According to Song of Songs, it’s not quite that simple. Biblical love—love between a woman and a man, and love between us and our Lord—feels deeply. To be sure, deep feeling gives deeply as well. But deep feeling feels deeply—and that is good. Because God made deep feelings good.
Song of Songs 1:4-8 —Love & eyes wide open. I am very dark but comely … my mother’s sons were angry with me … my own vineyard I have not kept — Song of Songs 1:5,6 (RSV). The woman who is the primary singer in our Song has been deeply wounded by her family, and she also acknowledges some sort of failing on her part. Her skin is deeply tanned, which in her world is not a sign of leisured beauty. In her case, it is a sign of being reduced to the degradation of laboring in the fields. Nor, for her part, is she free from fault: “my own vineyard I have not kept.”
A second take-away from this “best of songs” is that love loves with eyes wide open. There will be several phrases in this song that speak of love’s intoxicating power (2:5; 4:9; 5:1,8), but in this book, love is always cognizant of imperfections. At the human level, often the beloved’s imperfections become the things that the lover finds most attractive.
In his biography of Ulysses S. Grant, author Ron Chernow narrates a conversation between Grant and his wife Julia, who had grown up cross-eyed. As Grant began to become more and more a public figure, Julia, fearing that her “so very, very plain” appearance would hamper their public life, wanted to have surgery to straighten her eyes. Ulysses would have none of it: “Did I not see you and fall in love with you with these same eyes? I like them just as they are, and now, remember, you are not to interfere with them. They are mine, and let me tell you, Mrs. Grant, you had better not make any experiments, as I might not like you half so well with any other eyes.” Chernow concludes, “The anecdote, as well as many others, attests to the depth of Grant’s unconditional love for his wife, and vice versa” (Grant, p. 332).
Love is a place of deep feeling and of deep giving because it is first of all a place of deep grace. For her part, Mrs. Grant—and Mr. Grant’s best friends—loved him through, and in spite of, his debilitating alcoholism. And it was their love that fortified him in his struggle.
Christ loves us not because we are without fault. In fact, it is to us in our tragic fallenness that he has drawn near. And we bless him for it. As the ancient church sang in the darkness of Holy Saturday’s Great Vigil:
O truly needful sin of Adam which was blotted out by the death of Christ!
O happy fault (“felix culpa”) which merited so great a Redeemer!
Our love for Christ is infinitely and forever sweeter by virtue of the fact that he comes not for the lovely but for the unlovely, not for the perfect but for the imperfect. He not only comes to forgive, he comes to unite himself to us, and in doing so to turn our tragedy to comedy, our ugliness to beauty, our humiliation to glory. Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth!
Revelation 7: A perfected Israel. As providence would have it, our reading of Song of Songs will parallel the Book of Revelation’s account of the way God works to draw a people together from Israel and the nations, forms them as the Bride of Christ, protects them, and purifies them for the Marriage Feast of the Lamb (chapters 7 through 19).
In today’s reading, we see that God’s ultimate plan is to rescue 144,000 “of the people of Israel.” I submit to you that this is a figurative number—a number of love’s perfection, not of arbitrary exclusion. It is the square of 12 (12 being the number of Israel’s tribes) multiplied by 1,000 (1,000 being a number of magnitude), and is John’s way of referring to what Paul calls in his epistle to the Romans “the fullness of [the Jews]” (Romans 11:12). Paul balances out “the fullness of the Jews” with “the fullness of the Gentiles” in Romans 11:25. Just so, John’s 144,000 Jews receives its complement in the last half of Revelation 7 (tomorrow’s reading) with a countless throng from every nation and tribe and people and tongue “standing before the throne and the Lamb” (v. 9).
Between the first and second halves of Revelation 7, we get the dual mystery of God’s great plan: he elects perfectly, and does so with an expansive heart. Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth!
Luke 9: Sublime resolution. When the days drew near for him to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem — Luke 9:51. Luke so finely balances a sense of God’s perfect timing (“when the days drew near”) with the resolution it took Jesus to carry out his mission (“he set his face”). And there’s also the fine balance between the horror we know the upcoming crucifixion to be and the way Luke refers to the end of the mission to be Christ’s being taken up into glory (“for him to be taken up”). Also finely balanced is the implicit message to the apostles to “let it be” when people reject them, and thus him (“But he turned and rebuked them”), and his “all or nothing” call to follow him (“No one who puts a hand to the plow…”). What a wonderful Redeemer, bringing a wonderful redemption. Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth!
Be blessed this day,
Reggie Kidd+
Sunday Worship
Daily Devotions with the Dean
This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 16; Psalm 17; Song of Songs (overview); Acts 28:1-16; Luke 9:28-36
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)
Special note with regard to the Old Testament. During the next three weeks, I will be treating the Song of Songs instead of the lectionary’s choice, Ecclesiasticus (Wisdom of Ben Sirach). Despite the canonical status of the Song of Songs, and despite the fact that it was one of the biblical books that ancient and medieval believers (both Jewish and Christian) found most fascinating and fruitful, people in the modern era have ignored it for the most part. The Daily Office lectionary finds no place for it in the two-year cycle of Old Testament readings. Since this year’s cycle is one in which we read Song of Songs’ sister books in the wisdom tradition (Ecclesiastes and Job), I decided to dive into it. I hope you and I will be able to discover or rediscover its enchantment.
The Bible calls the book the “Song of Songs,” that is, “the best song.” This is a song about yearning for love. And with so much wrong in our world right now, there’s much to yearn for. We yearn for the end of pandemic. We yearn for maskless interaction, for hugs with one another. We long for the end of isolated depression or suffocating sequestering. We yearn for racial reckoning and reconciliation. We yearn for safety in the streets. We yearn for a return of civility to the public square. We yearn for the ability to worship with full-voiced singing, with the common loaf and the common cup. We yearn for the realization of medieval English mystic Julian of Norwich’s promise: “all shall be well.” Above all we yearn for the return of love.
Especially during this season of yearning, I’d offer the book of the Bible as genuinely “the best song.” Song of Songs teaches us to sing, in the midst of everything that is wrong in the world: “I’m my Beloved’s and he is mine. His banner over me is love” (Song of Songs 2:4).
Even before Christians came along, people in the Jewish community knew to read this Song at two levels. On the first level, the Song of Songs is—gloriously!—a full throated anthem in praise of conjugal, even of sensual, love between a man and a woman. Over the centuries, commentators—Jewish and Christian—have debated as to the exact scenario being depicted. By far the majority of commentators suggest we are witness to a celebration between two lovers: a Solomon-like, shepherd-king-husband and a Shulamite (probably a play on Solomon’s name), queenly wife. Coming from the God who made man and woman to come together as “one flesh,” there’s plenty to relish in a song that leads with “Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth! For your love is better than wine.”
Beyond that, though, from Day One, readers—or singers!—of this song have sensed that there’s more at play in this “best of songs” than merely its surface meaning. In the first century AD, Rabbi Akiba said, “Whoever trills the Song of Songs in banquet halls—and treats it as a mere lyric—has no share in the world to come” (Targum Sanhedrin 12.10). Indeed, he maintains, the “whole world is not worth the day on which the Song of Songs was given to Israel for all the Writings are holy and the Song of Songs is the Holy of Holies” (Mishnah Yadayim 3.5).
Jewish interpreters saw a second level of meaning in the Song of Songs: a meditation on the prophets’ theme of Yahweh as husband and his people as bride (Hosea 1-3; Jeremiah 2-3; 31:32; Ezekiel 16; Isaiah 50:1; 54:5-6). They read this “best of songs” as a love song between God and his people. When they read “I am my beloved’s and he is mine,” they could not help but hear resonances of “I will be your God and you will be my people.” And in their wake, Christian interpreters heard a song in praise of the love between Christ, i.e., God-as-Groom-in-the Flesh, and his Bride, the Church (John 3:29; 2 Corinthians 11:2; Ephesians 5:21-33; Revelation 19).
As we explore this “best of songs” together in the next three weeks, I pray for you a renewed sense that Christ, our Heavenly Bridegroom, loves you intimately, tenderly, and persistently. And I pray for you a certain “sacramental cast” to all your relationships here on earth, that they would all be consecrated to the Lord. This “best song” teaches us to guard all relationships—and especially those of intimacy—to cherish them, to preserve them, and to be wholeheartedly and unreservedly given to them.
Be blessed this day,
Reggie Kidd+
Noonday Prayer
Daily Devotions with the Dean
This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 18:1-20; Jonah 3:1-10; 4:1-11; Acts 27:27-44; Luke 9:18-27
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)
As you finish this reading of Jonah, I hope you will appreciate these four points the book makes. They have struck me in a fresh way.
God appoints. The Lord appoints “a large fish” (1:17). The Lord God appoints “a bush” (4:6). God appoints “a worm” (4:7). God appoints (even though NRSV uses a different word, the Hebrew does not) “a sultry east wind” (4:8). Throughout the story, God is orchestrating things according to his will. That’s what the Bible’s God does: orchestrate. As Creator and Lord of the entire universe, he works all things according to his good pleasure.
We may not always be able to discern God’s hand. Indeed, it’s almost as though Jonah resists discerning God’s hand. I’m sure I do the same. But the hand is always there. And the way of wisdom is to look for, and to be ready to yield to, that hand.
God is merciful. The portrait of Jonah in this account is intended, I am sure, to serve as an unflattering mirror for a proud and self-important Israel. The pathetic picture of Jonah stands in complete contrast to the very nature of the God who has revealed himself as Yahweh, the “I AM,” who pities and delivers the enslaved, and who then calls upon those so delivered to extend his pity to others.
When Jonah finally does go to Nineveh to deliver his prophetic message, he pronounces only doom, nothing else: “Forty days more, and Nineveh shall be overthrown” (Jonah 3:4—the message is even more concise in the original, consisting of but five Hebrew words). There’s no call for repentance. No hint of there being any “out.” Just five words of doom and gloom. It’s the Ninevites themselves—led by their king—who, “believing God,” take it upon themselves to fast, put on sackcloth, and “turn from their evil ways and from the violence that is in their hands” (Jonah 3:9). All this, just in case God might have a change in heart: “Who knows? God may relent and change his mind?” (Jonah 3:9).
Know what? God did “change his mind about the calamity that he had said he would bring upon them; and he did not do it” (Jonah 3:10). I’m pretty sure the point isn’t to present a logical puzzle—i.e., how can a sovereign God who has ordered all things from the beginning of time be induced to change his mind? I’m pretty sure the point is to shine a light on the essentially merciful nature of God. As the Prayer Book’s Prayer of Humble Access puts it: “But thou art the same Lord whose property is always to have mercy.” God is, as Jonah begrudgingly (!) acknowledges: “a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and ready to relent from punishing” (Jonah 4:2).
Never forget that. Never, ever, ever.
God cares about his whole creation. Doesn’t it catch your eye that the Ninevite king decrees that animals as well as humans shall fast in repentance, and that along with humans, “animals shall be covered with sackcloth, and they shall cry mightily to God” (Jonah 3:7-8)? That’s a clue to a larger theme in Jonah. Puzzled as to the reason for the storm that has come upon them, the sailors ask Jonah who he is and where he comes from. He answers: “I am a Hebrew. … I worship the Lord, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land” (Jonah 1:9). Yahweh, the Lord of heaven and the earth and the seas, puts in play a storm, a fish, a bush, and a worm to accomplish his purposes. And the sackcloth-covered animals are a nice touch in demonstration of “creation’s groaning” while it waits to be “set free from its bondage to decay and … [to] obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God” (Romans 8:21).
In his notes in the New Interpreter’s Study Bible, Kenneth M. Craig, Jr., sagely observes:
By the book’s end, the Lord emerges as a God of compassion, for Jonah and his people, to be sure, but also for other peoples and for animals. The book’s concluding rhetorical question—“Should I [the Lord] not be concerned about Nineveh, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand persons … and also many animals?”—deals less with repentance and more with creation (animals and humanity).
God delights in the beautiful. All these truths could be set out as cold propositional statements. In the Book of Jonah, though, they take the most artful form. Again, this from Kenneth Craig:
The tale of Jonah is one of the Bible’s literary gems. Marked by symmetry, balance, word-play, irony, and surprise, the book purports to teach Jonah (and all readers) about the problem of a gracious acceptance for one’s own people (“Deliverance is from the Lord,” Jonah says in 2:9) while churlishly resenting similar treatment for others (4:1-5).
The book is one of the most delightful reads in all of Scripture. Take time, if you are able, to read back through it, looking for:
parallels (e.g., the ship captain in chapter 1, and the Ninevite king in chapter 3; or “Perhaps the god will spare us a thought” in 1:6, and “Who knows? God may relent…” in 3:9),
irony (e.g., creation and even the Ninevites respond to God more appropriately than his prophet),
and even “Easter eggs” anticipating the coming of Christ (e.g., salvation-via-drowning, three days and nights in a kind of grave).
May Jonah, through his hard-earned lessons, teach us that God is both absolutely trustworthy and consummately beautiful. “O worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness” (Psalm 96:9 KJV).
Be blessed this day,
Reggie Kidd+