Noonday Prayer
Daily Devotions with the Dean
This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 80; Joel 1:1-13; Revelation 18:15-24; Luke 14:12-24
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)
Joel 1:1-13. To a farmer there can hardly be anything more horrific than invasion by an army of locusts. There’s no defense. There’s a singular result: total wreckage, and the loss of a season’s worth of labor. The prophet Joel surveys the wake of just such an attack. He may very well have witnessed ransacking by actual locusts at some point in his lifetime. But the locusts serve as a metaphor, or a symbol, of the way invading armies have plundered and pillaged his homeland: “For a nation has invaded my land, powerful and innumerable” (Joel 1:6).
There’s no way to date Joel’s writings exactly. We’re not told under what king he served. What’s so powerful about Joel’s graphic vision of a land blighted by locusts is that it could have applied after either of the invasions—Israel in the north by the Assyrians, or Judah in the south by the Babylonians. In each case, everything has been leveled. Everything that has made the Promised Land the Promised Land has been taken.
And so, the prophet calls, in the first place, simply for lament. Everybody—from drunkard to virgin, from priest to vinedresser— needs to grieve. People can’t even worship aright: “Grain offering and drink offering are withheld (there being no crops left!) from the house of God.” All they can do in the moment is grieve.
Eventually, Joel will call for repentance, and then he will make promises of an extraordinary future. But first, he says: “Put on sackcloth and lament…” (Joel 1:13).
We live in not dissimilar days. A locust-like coronavirus has devastated the earth, emptying city streets and filling hospital emergency rooms. At the same time, a locust-like plague of discontentment and grievance has beset the hearts of citizens of the U.S., whether on the left or the right. And I believe the first thing to do is simply to let the sadness settle in.
Revelation 18:15-24. Eventually, all will be set to rights: that’s what the Book of Revelation wants us to know. And setting to rights will entail the bringing down of every destructive and defiling impulse that has ever been let loose against the human race. “Babylon” will fall. Ultimately, even nature itself will be brought back into equilibrium, with chapter 21’s “new heaven and new earth.” No more coronavirus, no more sickness of any sort. No more dying, no more hurricanes or earthquakes or devastating fires. But the hinge of it all, the fulcrum, will be the elimination from among humans of every corrupting influence. “Babylon” will fall. As Paul puts it: all of creation will be set free from its corruption with the redemption of the human race (Romans 8:19-21).
And once “the great whore” Babylon has fallen, the stage will be set for Revelation 19’s wedding feast of the Bride (tomorrow’s reading).
Luke 14:12-24. “Blessed is anyone who will eat bread in the kingdom of God” — Luke 14:15. An invitation to that banquet is to be prized above any invitation you might receive, ever. And yet, inconceivably, it is an invitation that too many of us are inclined to put in the trash can: “But they all alike began to make excuses.” There’s land to survey, there are oxen to yoke, there’s a new marriage to begin. (I just bought a car. I just got a new job. We’re heading out on our honeymoon...)
It’s possible to have your field of vision so filled with this life’s possibilities that you miss life’s number one possibility: a place at the Table of the Feast of God. Jesus is not saying don’t take the job, or don’t commit to the marriage. But he is saying that it’s wise to hold all these things with a loose grip, because a great day is coming. “The poor, the crippled, the blind, and the lame” … people from “the roads and lanes” will fill God’s house—and there will be a place there for you and for me, if only we have prepared ourselves to say “Yes!” when the invitation comes.
Be blessed this day,
Reggie Kidd+
Sunday Worship
Noonday Prayer
Noonday Prayer
Daily Devotions with the Dean
This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 69; Song of Songs 8:8-14; Revelation 17:1-18; Luke 13:31-35
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)
Wrapping up Song of Songs. Let me explain why I inserted a study of Song of Songs into the cycle of Daily Office readings. For me, the Catholic philosopher Peter Kreeft added a certain sparkle to the trilogy of Old Testaments writings (Ecclesiastes, Job, and Song of Songs) when, in his little book Three Philosophies of Life, he compared them to the three sections of Dante’s Divine Comedy.
Ecclesiastes shows us how life without God is hell on earth—the Inferno. Job shows us that the path of salvation and of suffering are one and the same—the Purgatorio. Song of Songs shows us that God made us for joyous intimacy—the Paradiso.
It so happens that in this year’s cycle of Old Testament readings, the Daily Office has taken us through Ecclesiastes and Job, studies in seeing that life is a dead end without God, and in learning how God uses suffering to enable us to know him more deeply. I noticed, thanks to Professor Kreeft, that there was an omission in the readings: despite its historical importance to the church (not to mention the synagogue), the Song of Songs is excluded from the Daily Office. We were being deprived, I concluded, of what Paul Harvey might have called “the rest of the story,” namely, this precious “best of songs” that acknowledges what we all know—that we are desperate for love—and, what we need to learn: “the flame of Yah” will not disappoint.
As we leave our musings over this “best of songs”, I pray for you now exactly what I prayed three weeks ago when we began: 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.
With today’s verses, our singers do their own bit of wrapping up: “Take care of the ‘little sisters’ who are coming along after you,” they say (Song of Songs 8:8-10). “Ignore distractions along the path to a love that is exclusive and therefore true,” they implore (Song of Songs 8:11-12); And finally, they urge us to be watchful and to pray, “Make haste, my beloved…” (Song of Songs 8:13-14). Maranatha! Come quickly, Lord, and save!
Revelation. Speaking of “come quickly, Lord,” we leave the Old Testament’s version of God’s Love Story, to swing into the last few days of the New Testament’s version of the Love Story. First, in Revelation 17, we must meet the story’s “other woman,” the whore of Babylon.
Part of the Bible’s overarching story line points to two different paths to fulfilling the mandate God gives to Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden: “fill the earth and subdue it” (Genesis 1:28). One is a path of faith, and the other of faithlessness. Genesis chapter four provides the opening manifestation of the “two ways.” Enoch, son of the faithless murderer Cain, builds the first city, which he names after himself (Genesis 4:17). (Perhaps there’s a message in that fact alone.) In this line of unbelief flourish the great gifts of culture-building. of “filling the earth and subduing it”: animal husbandry, music, and manufacturing (Genesis 4:20-22). Meanwhile, in the line of the believing Seth (the murdered Abel’s replacement) flows just one gift: the ability “to invoke the name of Yahweh”—that is, to relate to God by name (Genesis 4:25).
Two tracks—two possibilities —for human existence are hereby laid down. Israel’s mission, in the midst of faithless nations, is to incubate and nourish a redemptive vision of culture-building. That is why Yahweh calls these descendants of Seth into covenant with himself, and to “be my treasured possession out of all the peoples. Indeed, the whole earth is mine, but you shall be for me a priestly kingdom and a holy nation” (Exodus 19:5-6).
The 5th century AD North African theologian Augustine will name the two paths the “City of Man” and the “City of God.” In the Book of Revelation, they take the form of the “whore of Babylon” and the “bride of Christ.” By the end of the Book of Revelation, God will perfect the beautification of the Bride of Christ (Revelation 19:7-10), and bring about a New Jerusalem on a new earth under new heavens (Revelation 21-22).
In the meantime, though, God must dispatch the “whore of Babylon,” the embodiment of a faithless and disobedient humanity’s project of “filling the earth and subduing it”—in a word, Augustine’s “City of Man.” Students of the Book of Revelation have struggled to identify the Babylon to which John refers. To some, the “whore” looks like literal Babylon in Assyria. To some, her seven hills suggest that Babylon is Rome (17:9). To others, the fact that Revelation refers to “the great city” as the place where Jesus was killed means that “Babylon” is Jerusalem (11:8). I think it’s most likely that John’s “Babylon” is intended to resonate with each of these cities. But in the end, the whoring “Babylon” is a spiritual reality: a composite for the entirety of the human project that has sought to build civilization without God, and has been proven to be rapine, exploitative, and blasphemous. To turn to another biblical image: Babylon, “the great whore” is a reprised—and final—Tower of Babel that must be felled. Stay tuned.
Luke. “…as a hen gathers her brood under her wings…” — Luke 13:34. In the face of this poignant image, I don’t know what else to do (since I’ve already quoted myself once in today’s devotional) to repeat what I wrote when we came upon the parallel expression in Matthew (7/8/2020). It’s significant that Jesus meets his contemporaries’ rejection of him not with anger, but with sadness: “Jerusalem, Jerusalem…! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing.” He laments their repudiation, even while he knows its outcome will be good: the salvation of the world. And he looks to the day when the unfolding sadness will be turned to joy, when his countryfolk will confess: “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.” Blessed, indeed, is he…
Be blessed this day,
Reggie Kidd+
Noonday Prayer
Noonday Prayer
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+