Saturday February 6 Epiphany 4
Click here for simplified daily office prayers
Psalm 75
God assures us that justice will prevail.
Psalm 76
Praise to God who stands with overwhelming power for the poor and for the oppressed.
Isaiah 57: 3-13
God warns those who have returned to Jerusalem but who continue to trust in mysterious rituals, child sacrifice and sexualized worship (a way of trying to manipulate God’s fertile creativity). There will be unhappy consequences for those who try to force God to help them, but those who remain loyal to the God of justice will prosper.
Mark 9: 14-29
The disciples have been unable to trust Jesus’ insisting that he (and they) must die (become vulnerable) for the kingdom to break in. Now they encounter a distraught father of an epileptic boy who knows he does not trust very much (the meaning of “believe”) and he asks Jesus to help him trust more. In contrast, the disciples do not ask Jesus to help them trust.
The disciples ask why they could not cast out the demon – Jesus’ answer that only prayer can do this may be a way of Jesus saying they don’t trust yet in the power of God to carry them through death into resurrection. Up to this point in Mark’s gospel the disciples think that bringing healing to the world can be done by the exercise of sheer power, which is what they think Jesus is dong. But from this point on, Jesus is clear that only giving up self-centred power will allow God’s loving power to break in.
Trusting in sheer power, instead of trusting in vulnerable love, has always been an issue in our personal lives and relationships. We are seeing more clearly in our time how seductive and destructive that assumption is in the governance of countries and of the world.
This week’s collect:
Living God,
in Christ you make all things new.
Transform the poverty of our nature
by the riches of your grace,
and in the renewal of our lives
make known your glory;
through Jesus Christ our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever. Amen.
Click here to share a comment on the web site.