Daily Devotions with the Dean

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 71; Song of Songs 8:6-7; Revelation 16:12-21; Luke 13:18-30

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)

I noted at the beginning of our meditations on Song of Songs (10/16/2020) that this “best of songs” is a song about yearning for love. We’ve seen how elusive love can be, and how dedicated our “Solomon” and our “Shulammite” are to finding each other and to satisfying each other’s desire for love. 

In something of a climax, the Song—and we must remember that Song of Songs is a song—extols love itself. Song of Songs 8:6-7 marks a zenith, not just because its topic is the very love that has drawn our couple together, but because this couplet includes the singular mention of God’s name. Here is the more accurate rendering of the last phrase of 8:6, where jealous love is said to be “a flame of Yahweh himself” (8:6d). This song is “the best of songs” because, finally, it extols the God who is love. 

“Set me as a seal…” — Song of Songs 8:6a. A seal is the way, especially in societies where literacy was not universal, by which one person would certify their identity. We are not sure who is speaking in these verses—some commentators think it’s the Bride, others that it’s the Groom. It doesn’t matter, because either could be expressing this desire. When I ask you to take me “as a seal (hanging as a pendant around your neck) over your heart,” I commit myself to adapting my thoughts and attitudes and expressions to you; and to do so in such a complete way that when people see and hear me, they see and hear you. Scripture speaks elsewhere of being “one flesh” — that is, two people with a common identity. That is our Bride and her Groom. 

This kind of love becomes what Charles Williams (Christian novelist and “Inklings” member) calls “coinherence”: something like a mutual indwelling. And to a Christian sensibility, coinherence is possible because, and only because, it is a sharing in the inner life of the Triune God. Jesus promised his disciples: “…you will know that I am in the Father and you in me, and I in you” (John 14:20). As Williams’s fellow Inkling C. S. Lewis put it, our Heavenly Father wishes to absorb us into his life without devouring us; he “wants a world full of beings united to Him but still distinct.” Such is the intimacy our “Solomon” and our “Shulammite” desire for and in each other. Such is the mystery of the bond between Christ and his Bride (Ephesians 5:32). Such is the aspiration, at least, of a man and a woman when they pledge their lives in the bond of marriage.  May God grant grace. 

“For love is strong as Death…” — Song of Songs 8:6b. Our loving couple rhapsodize about love being stronger than death. They liken love to a fire no amount of water can put out, and they claim their love is so much beyond price that money can’t sully it. Experience teaches, however, that such rhapsodizing feels like a leap into unbridled romanticism—like so many songs from the youth culture of my teenage years. Wedding services that may even include today’s verses about love being as strong as death may nonetheless stipulate that the vows taken are: “till death do us part.” Love can flame out—with or without external flooding. And finances have shipwrecked countless marriages. 

But then, notice the capital “D” in Death as I’ve quoted it above. Here’s the Jerusalem Bible’s rendering of Song of Songs 8:6-7. I commend it to you: 

6 For love is strong as Death
jealousy relentless as Sheol.
The flash of it is a flash of fire,
a flame of Yahweh himself.
7 Love no flood can quench,
no torrents drown.
Were a man to offer all the wealth of his house to buy love,
contempt is all he would purchase. 

This passage is brimming with theological meaning. In Canaanite religion “Death” (Mot) is the force that the pagan god Baal fought against. Sheol is the place inhabited by spirits entrapped by death. And the twice appearing word “flash” could have been capitalized too as “Flash,” because it is Resep, the name of the Canaanite god of pestilence (per Jenson). The Old Testament treats Yahweh as the one who delivers, not just from the torrential flood of the Red Sea, but from cosmic watery chaos (Psalm 93:3-4; Habakkuk 3:8,15). And in the biblical world, money isn’t just money, it is Mammon, the worship of which is idolatry. 

Intriguingly, the last phrase of verse six includes the single mention of God—and that, by his personal name—in the entire Song: more precisely, “a flame of Yah.” It’s mystifying to me that most translations bury the reference to Yahweh. The verse invokes as guarantor of love’s strength the God who has revealed himself in Exodus 3 as Deliverer (“I AM THAT I AM,” from which “Yahweh” derives), who loves his people for no other reason than that “love” is who he is (Exodus 34; Deuteronomy 7), whose name is “Jealous” (Exodus 34:14), and who therefore is “a consuming fire” (Deuteronomy 4:24; Hebrews 12:29). The God of the Bible is a consuming fire that comes against all that would destroy the creation he loves, and above all, the humans he has lovingly fashioned to bear his image and to steward and tend his creation. 

There is, therefore, a place where love proved strong as Death: the Cross and Empty Tomb of Jesus Christ. It is in Jesus (whose name means “Yahweh saves”) that Yahweh takes on and defeats the enemies of his people: death, disease, chaos, and cupidity. Jesus is God’s jealously protective love. It is to him that the Song of Songs elegantly, exquisitely, and evocatively points.

And that, to offer one final point, is why it is so important to choose not to be among the citizens of Babylon who drink “the wine cup of the fury of his wrath” (Revelation 16:19), but, instead, to be a part of the Bride of Christ and to prepare to “feast in the kingdom of God” (Luke 13:29 Jerusalem Bible). May you choose wisely.

Be blessed this day,

Reggie Kidd+

Noonday Prayer

Daily Devotions with the Dean

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 72; Song of Songs 8:1-5; Revelation 16:1-11; Luke 13:10-17

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)

Song of Songs: up from the wilderness. It is difficult to detect a single line of thought running through today’s verses in Song of Songs—but I think it’s there. The first three verses read to me as though our bride is so delighted in the company of her bridegroom that her only regret is that she could not have known him from birth, sharing, as though she were his sister, all of life’s journey. But then, in verse four, she acknowledges that love comes in its own time. 

The first part of verse five is quite striking. It has to remind us of the analogy of the love between this bride and her groom, on the one hand, and between Israel and her Lord, on the other. The opening clause is identical to the earlier question: “Who is she coming from the wilderness, like a column of smoke?” (Song of Songs 3:6). Back in chapter three, the bride, advancing to her wedding, was being likened to Israel being accompanied by the Shekinah presence. Here in chapter eight, the question concludes differently: “Who is she coming from the wilderness, leaning upon her beloved?” (8:5, emphasis mine). There (chapter 3) the wedding was being anticipated. Here (chapter 8) the wedding has taken place, and we are witnessing the couple’s procession arm in arm. 

It is perhaps for this reason (contemplating the post-wedding procession) that the Song’s bride’s thoughts turn to her “awakening” her groom “under the apple tree”—a euphemism for the same sort of love-making that had brought them into existence in the first place (thus, the seemingly curious description of the apple tree as the groom’s mother’s place of labor or conception, depending on the commentator).  

While the details of the story may be challenging to tease out, the significance for our relationship with the Lord is not. The Jewish apostle Paul is keenly aware of the Old Testament’s image of the Lord marrying his people to himself. Because he sees Christ as doing just that, Paul explains that our being free from the law means we are free to “marry another”: “…you have died to the law through the body of Christ, so that you may belong to another, to him who has been raised from the dead in order that we may bear fruit for God” (Romans 7:3-4). 

We are the “she” who is coming from the wilderness, leaning on her Beloved. We know him intimately and love him dearly, and he knows us intimately and loves us dearly. As we yield to communion with him—in prayer, in study, in worship, in partaking of the Sacraments, in seeking and serving Christ in all persons—we find that we “bear fruit for God.” Amen. Let it be so!

Revelation: the seven bowls. The Book of Revelation moves toward a final consummation in which there is confirmation and perfection of all that is beautiful and good, and in which there is condemnation and the undoing of all that is ugly and evil. Today’s verses open the chapter of “the seven bowls of the wrath of God” (Revelation 16:1). Throughout the course of his book, John is given visions outlining a remarkable progress toward final judgment. There had been: 

• seven seals preparing for judgment (Revelation 6), 

• followed by seven trumpets warning of judgment (Revelation 8–9), and now 

• seven bowls of judgment itself being poured out (Revelation 16). 

As the visions transition from seals of preparation to trumpets of warning to bowls of the outpouring of judgment itself, there has been a progression. Two examples: the second seal had said civil strife was coming (6:3-4), the second trumpet had warned that a third of the sea would turn to blood (8:8-9), and at the second bowl of judgment all the sea becomes blood and “every living thing in the sea died” (16:3). In addition, the third seal had prophesied famine (6:5-6), the third trumpet had warned that a third of the waters would become poisonous and many would die (8:10-11), and now the judgment itself is sweeping: “The third angel poured his bowl into the rivers and the springs of water, and they became blood” (16:4). 

When reading the Book of Revelation, it’s always important to keep the end of the story in view. We need not be surprised and discouraged if evil increases, going from bad to worse. The intensification of the diabolical is only the death throes of one who received a mortal blow on the cross—and who will, in God’s own time—be dispatched with one final, definitive stroke at Christ’s return. We know the story ends well, because each cycle concerning judgment—the seals and the trumpets and the bowls—concludes with a note of victory: 

• the seven seals close with a period of silence in heaven while the prayers of the saints below and the saints above combine to intercede for final justice on the earth (8:1-5); 

• the seven trumpets introduce a song in celebration of the reign of God (11:15-19); and 

• the seven bowls of judgment will yield (as we will see tomorrow) the judgment of Babylon (16:17-21). 

No matter how bad it looks, the people of the Lamb will overcome. No matter how great the temptation to despair, the Bride will be brought through in radiant glory. Amen. Let it be so!

Luke: a daughter of Abraham. Luke provides a mini-portrait of all of us who belong to the Lamb and are part of his Bride. This “woman with a spirit that had crippled her for eighteen years … [who] was bent over and was quite unable to stand up straight” (Luke 13:11) is a picture of all of us who find ourselves crushed and deformed in soul (if not in body) by a power beyond our control. At the word of Jesus, this woman is suddenly able to stand erect—one of the most distinguishing marks of human dignity. And with no prompting at all, “she began praising God”—one of the most distinguishing marks of life unmarred by Eden’s fall. Here, truly, is a “daughter of Abraham.” Here, indeed, is a precursor of the Bride of Christ. Amen. Let it be so!

Be blessed this day, 

Reggie Kidd+

Noonday Prayer

Daily Devotions with the Dean

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 61; Psalm 62; Song of Songs 7:1-13; Revelation 14:14–5:8; Luke 13:1-9

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)

The redemption of desire. Our “Solomon’s” loving gaze takes in the whole of his “Shulammite’s” form, from bottom to top, perhaps even, as some commentators suggest, as she accepts the earlier invitation to dance (but for him, and him alone). He exults in her every feature, from sandaled feet to captivating tresses, with tantalizing stops along the way: her shapely thighs, her inviting midsection, her charming breasts, and her regal head and face. It is all very straightforward, and, because the couple’s love is bounded by covenant, it is also altogether pure. Following her description of him in the previous chapter (6:4-7), this, his second graphic description of her (see 4:1-7), is a part of the expression of a shared surrender of two lives that have become “one flesh.”

A telling detail lies in the distinctive way she completes the thought “I am my beloved’s…” (the third appearance of that line in Song of Songs; see 2:16; 6:3). This time she follows with, “…and his desire is for me” (Song of Songs 7:10). It is one more signal of our couple’s rediscovering Eden. This use of the term “desire” (Heb teshuqah) is the third of only three times that this particular word for “desire” appears in the Hebrew Bible. And it cannot, in my view, be accidental. 

One mark of the curse imposed after the Fall in Eden is that the woman’s “desire” (Heb teshuqah) for her husband will be answered, not by mutuality, but by power: “he will rule over you” (Genesis 3:16). Then, outside the locked gates of Eden, in the hope of averting Cain’s ill treatment of his brother Abel, the Lord warns Cain that “sin is lurking at the door; its desire (Heb teshuqah) is for you, but you must master it” (Genesis 4:7). In both cases, “desire” is sin-laden: people will find longings rebuffed by power, and relationships will be shattered by sin as a pernicious personified power. 

But the Bible can’t leave it there. The couple whose love the Song of Songs explores is re-entering an Eden of sorts. By the end of this chapter, the Bride invites the Bridegroom to yet another scene for love-making that is redolent with Eden imagery: blossoming grape vines, blooming pomegranates, fragrant mandrakes, and “all choice fruits” (7:12-13). What makes the entire scene an anticipation of a re-Edenized cosmos is her declaration that, “… his desire (Heb teshuqah) is for me.” Here, in a new Eden, he answers her desire with a desire of his own. The desire that overpowers in the Song of Songs is not relationship-destroying sin, but life-giving love: “Eat, friends, drink, and be drunk with love” (5:1; and see also 2:5; 4:9). At last, man and woman meet in love’s garden as equals and partners. They come together for each other’s flourishing and delight. 

A theological hint of love’s incarnation. Jewish interpreters long ago detected theological hints in the Bride’s and the Bridegroom’s respective descriptions in chapters six and seven. She describes his statuesque splendor “from above to below,” from golden head to alabaster legs (5:10-15). He describes her undulating loveliness “from below to above,” from sandaled feet to flowing locks (7:1-5). God, so the inference goes, in becoming husband to his people, descends from “high to low” in order to raise us up from “low to high,” that we might meet as “friends”: “This is my beloved, and this is my friend, O daughters of Jerusalem” (Song of Songs 5:16c). Says Jewish commentator Michael Fishbane: “This account also conveys messianic hope. Whereas God moves from transcendence to immanence, in response to Israel’s beckoning love, the people are promised ascendance and restoration.” 

Christians insist that the picture has come into clear focus now that God’s love has become incarnate, now that the Divine Husband literally has come “from above to below” to raise his bride “from below to above.” In the Old Testament God describes his bride (Israel) in Ezekiel 16 as lewd, defiled, and unworthy. She is utterly undesirable: cast to the side of the road due to her whorings, abominations, and wickedness. Now, because of God’s forgiveness and redemption through Jesus Christ, she, the church, has come to know definitively that “his desire is for me.” The church knows that “Christ loved [her] and gave himself up for her, in order to make her holy by cleansing her with the washing of water by the word, so as to present the church to himself in splendor, without a spot or wrinkle or anything of the kind, yes, so that she may be holy and without blemish” (Ephesians 6:26-27).  Not at all unlike the female lover in the Song of Songs, the church confesses that she belongs to her Beloved, and she rejoices that her Beloved’s desire is for her.

A note on physicality in Song of Songs. As we near the end of our study of this “best of songs” in praise of human love, it seems a word about God’s delight in physicality is in order. The Bible has no patience with a bifurcated spirituality, a splitting of reality into “good” (spirituality) and “evil” (physicality). The Bible’s Lord is maker of all of heaven and all of earth. And though the earth he loves has come, for a time, under the alien domination of sin and evil and death, the Bible’s Lord has not surrendered his creation to those forces. The entire point of the incarnation is that Yahweh is intent upon redeeming and reclaiming all of created reality—his created reality. Mutually joyous intimacy, spiritual and physical, between a husband and wife provides the richest of pictures of the mystery of God’s own commitment to enfold us—fallen creatures though we now are—into the eternal intimacy of the triune life. 

So, here’s to our ancient couple’s delight in one another—body and soul. And here’s to the profound tone-poem they have left us for enjoying the Divine Romance. 

Be blessed this day,

Reggie Kidd+

Noonday Prayer

Daily Devotions with the Dean

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 56; Psalm 57; Psalm 58; Song of Songs 6:1-13; Revelation 14:1-13; Luke 12:49-59

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. “I am my beloved’s and my beloved is mine” — Song of Songs 6:3. This is not first time this phrase has come up in Song of Songs, and is seemingly an intentional evoking of the covenant relationship between Yahweh and his people: “I will be your God and you will be my people.” The Song explores an analogy between that relationship and the covenant bond between husband and wife. Earlier, in Song of Songs 2:16, the woman uses this phrase to express her joy at the arrival of her beloved who “leaped mountains” and “bounded hills” to come to her. There the point was to stress the couple’s delight in each other. Here in chapter 6, there seem to be threats to the relationship, and the phrase clarifies the exclusive love that the man and the woman have for each other. It’s as though she were saying here, “I am my beloved’s (and nobody else’s) and my beloved is mine (and nobody else’s).” 

It is difficult to determine just what the threats to their relationship are. But they are there. The chorus of women who ask about the whereabouts of the beloved appear to a number of commentators to be contesting the strength of the bond between lover and beloved, and to be inviting themselves to become competitors for his affections (6:1). The female lover responds: I’m his, and he’s mine. Back off!

Then the male lover, or husband, chimes in. He praises, once again, the loveliness of his wife, and attests that though there be queens and concubines and “maidens without number” that could avert his eyes and heart, there is only one woman for him: the “Shulammite” (Song of Songs 6:8,13). Interpreters have puzzled over the term “Shulammite.” I think the best explanation is that it is a feminine form of “Solomon.” Worthy of consideration is Jenson’s suggestion: “Thus, just as elsewhere the Song calls the male lover Solomon, since every male lover is a great king, so here the female lover is a female Solomon, since every female lover is a great queen.” 

Another threat to the relationship lies in the urging of a male chorus that the Shulammite “return, that we may look upon you”—specifically, that she dance for them, putting her femininity on display (Song of Songs 6:13). The last half of verse thirteen is her demurral: “Why should you look upon the Shulammite (i.e., me), as upon a dance before two armies?” 

Despite the complex imagery and the difficulty in discerning the details of the story line of the love relationship between the man and the woman, the theological takeaway from this chapter is straightforward. God’s design for love between a man and a woman is one of exclusive love, desire, and commitment— and that, precisely because the love between Yahweh and Israel in the Old Testament (updated to Christ and the Church in the New Testament) is one of exclusive love, desire, and commitment. 

Revelation. Today’s reading in Revelation underscores the point that our love for the Lord is to be exclusive. So jealous is Christ for the love of his Bride that Babylon (symbolic of idolatry and greed), who “has made all nations drink of the wine of God’s wrath,” must fall. Babylon seduces with deceptive charms: blasphemy and excessive luxury—Revelation 17:3-6; 18:3-19. Against her wiles and her persecutions, the saints must endure, “keep the commandments of God, and hold fast the faith of Jesus” (Revelation 14:12). And those who have “been redeemed from the earth,” and who “have not defiled themselves with women” (Revelation 14:4, which I take to be not literal, but metaphorical of those who resist Babylon’s temptations to blasphemy and luxury) find themselves playing harps (presumably joyfully!) and singing a “new song” (presumably exuberantly!) before the throne of God! Those who keep themselves as part of Christ’s pure Bride know joy and exuberance—exactly like the bride of Song of Songs. 

Luke. In its own way, today’s reading in Luke makes a similar point. The cost to Heaven’s Groom for winning to himself a pure Bride was exorbitant. It entailed the baptism of Christ’s death. And during his ministry on earth, anticipation of that baptism weighed on our fully-human-and-fully-divine Savior mightily: “I have a baptism with which to be baptized and what stress I am under until it is accomplished” (Luke 12:50). Because his jealous love is driving him to such lengths, this one whose mission is at bottom one of peace (Luke 2:14) declares war on all that defiles and degrades his bride: “Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division!” And his arrival demands that we make a choice—for his love, or against it. May you and I wisely “interpret the present time,” and, like the bride in Song of Songs, surrender to him all of our love, all of our desire, and all of our commitment.  

Be blessed this day, 

Reggie Kidd+

Sunday Worship

Noonday Prayer

Daily Devotions with the Dean

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 40; Psalm 54; Song of Songs 5:9-16; Revelation 13:1-10 (and Saturday’s Revelation 13:11-18); Luke 12:13-31

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)

Song of Songs. Challenged with the question, “What makes your Beloved so special?”, the Bride declares that her Beloved is “the chiefest among ten thousand” (Song of Songs 5:10b KJV). Just as the Bridegroom earlier had described the Bride’s features from her face down to her neck and then to her breasts, so the Bride describes her Bridegroom in similar sequence: “his head...his eyes...his cheeks...his lips….” She continues to describe “his arms...his body...his legs….” Once again, it is worth taking time to read this slowly and appreciate the lovely lyrical quality of the Bride’s delight in, and love for, her Bridegroom.  (For a possible real-world, but lesser analogy, one might imagine a bride in a later century trying to describe her lover in terms of the physical perfection of Michelangelo’s David. With thanks to commentator Robert Jenson for this suggestion.) 

The Bride and the Bridegroom exult in the loveliness each sees in the other. There is an innocence in the joy with which they celebrate their love and their delight in one another’s physicality.  Eden exists! To each other, they are perfect. He to her: “There is no flaw in you” (4:7). She of him: “All of him is delightful” (5:16b). 

On the human plane, one thing to notice is that husband and wife meet at the level of mutuality—they experience each other as “sister” and “brother,” and she calls him “friend” (4:9,10,12; 5:1,2,16; later, 8:1). 

On the divine-human plane, the thing to notice is that for Christians, God’s incarnation in his Son brings an elevation that is perhaps more accessible to hymnody than to formal theology:

What a friend we have in Jesus, all our sins and griefs to bear…

Jesus, what a friend for sinners, Jesus lover of my soul…

Less well-known, perhaps, are the lyrics of poet Fanny Crosby, whose physical blindness sometimes seems to make her view of spiritual truths all the more accurate. “Seeing” her Savior and Lord Jesus in today’s verses, she writes: 

He’s the Chief among ten thousand, And the fairest of the fair;
I shall see Him in His beauty, And His image I shall bear.

Revelation. By contrast, what vile ugliness confronts us in Revelation 13! The dragon (Satan) produces a first beast (dubbed in John’s epistles “antichrist”—1 John 2:18,22; 2 John 7) whose career is a mocking inversion of Christ’s (Revelation 13:12,14), and a second beast (dubbed in 1 John “the spirit of antichrist”—1 John 4:3) whose career is a mocking inversion of the life-giving Spirit (Revelation 13:12-15). Together the dragon and the two beasts form a kind of counter trinity, set against the true Three-in-One. 

Two points I wish to make:

First, while both Revelation and John’s epistles do seem to point to a future day in which there will be an explosion of evil against “the Lamb and his people,” John also indicates that the entire era of the church’s existence is characterized as “the persecution and the kingdom and the patient endurance” (Revelation 1:9). Already in John’s day, he could point to many “antichrists” (1 John 2:18), that is, to many figures who stand against Christ, even offering themselves as substitute-Christs (for “substitute” is one of the meanings for the “anti-“ in “antichrist”). And already in John’s day, he detects the working of the “spirit of antichrist,” animating false teaching within the church and persecution from without. We should not be shocked or discouraged if we sense “antichrist” and “the spirit of antichrist” around us in our own day as well. 

That said, we should not miss the fact that the power of these evil beings is limited (note the repeated refrain, “it was allowed” and “it was given authority”—e.g., 13:5,7,15). We know the end of the story. We know that this pathetic, if powerfully destructive, rebellion is doomed. We win. 

Luke. In the face of all that is still evil in the world, God is preparing his Church for her wedding day. That fact makes it all the more imperative that we heed Jesus’s teaching from today’s gospel reading that we not allow ourselves a short-sighted, “your-best-life-now” preoccupation with money and bigger things and better stuff (larger and larger barns). And further, that we learn the peace and confidence that come from “considering the lilies” and trusting both ourselves, and our destinies, to the Lord’s tender, beautifying care. 

Be blessed this day, 

Reggie Kidd+ 

Noonday Prayer