Before I ever became Anglican, I was gifted The Book of Common Prayer. (Whether or not you ever become Anglican, this is a treasure trove!) One of the many blessings of this book is the Daily Offices found at the end. What is a Daily Office? A simple answer is that it is a Bible reading plan. More specifically, it tells Anglicans which passages of Scripture to read during Morning and Evening prayer. I tend to read all these passages during my Morning Prayer.
As often as I can, I will share these passages with you (or you can follow along in your own BCP), and will give a meditation on one (or sometimes more than one) of the passages.
We are in Daily Office Year One. This week is Proper 5.
Read Psalms 24 and 29 or 8 and 84; Deut. 29:16-29; Rev. 12:1-12; and Matt. 15:29-39.
Psalm 24: Who is the King of Glory? Who can ascend his holy mountain?
When we read the requirements for the kind of person who can ascend the holy mountain of the Lord in verse 4—clean hands, pure heart, hasn’t appealed to what is false, hasn’t sworn deceitfully—we quickly realize that none of us can ascend. My heart sure isn’t pure. What about yours?
I hear Paul shouting all the way from Romans: “No one is righteous! No, not one!”
So what hope is there for us who want to seek the face of God?
Our hope is in the only one who is righteous, the King of Glory. This righteous King’s name is Jesus, the Son of Man. Lift up your heads, Christian, for the King of Glory has descended to us by taking on flesh, then descended to a cross, and finally to a grave, in order to raise us up with him (Phil. 2). He cloaks us with his righteousness and brings us with him to the Father.
“Christ is our righteousness because he is God eternal, the source of righteousness, and the very righteousness of God.” —John Calvin
But Jesus is not the appetizer before the main course. Remember Jesus’ words: “Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14:9). Jesus is the God of our salvation, and when we look upon his face we see none other than the face of God.
“The words of Jesus are the voice of God. The tears of Jesus are the pity of God. The wrath of Jesus is the judgment of God. All believers confess, with adoring praise, that in their most sacred hours, God and Christ merge in each other with morally indistinguishable identity. When in secret we look into God’s face, still it is the face of Christ that rises up before us.” —H. R. Mackintosh
Here is a sermon that my husband, Osvaldo, preached for Beeson’s chapel on this text in 2018. As he says in his sermon, “God has always, even in the Old Testament, related to his people through the mediation of his Son Jesus Christ.”
What questions or reflections did you have about any of the texts in today’s Daily Office?
O God, from whom all good doth come: Grant that by thy inspiration we may think those things that are right, and by thy merciful guiding may perform the same; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.