Thursday March 31 Lent 4
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Psalm 69 Part 1
A desperate plea for help in the midst of betrayal, disaster and defeat. Some imagery is violent, which we can interpret as expressing a deep desire that there be no evil in the world. The references to gall and vinegar may have influenced the early Christians’ description of Jesus’ crucifixion. Often used on Fridays, the weekly anniversary of the crucifixion.
Friday is a day to ask what it means that God is willing to go through such an experience.
Exodus 1.6-22 What’s Exodus about?
Generations after Joseph and his eleven brothers, Exodus picks up the story of God’s relentless intention to ensure the Jewish people become a great nation. The Israelites have become enslaved in Egypt (just as at the time of the compilation of these stories the people had become enslaved in Babylon). But despite the virtually global power of the Egyptian emperor who commands that all baby Hebrew boys be killed, God’s promise to the people of Israel will not be thwarted. We might apply that trust to our times.
At the time of Jesus, 500 years after this story had been compiled, Matthew interpreted Pharaoh’s attempt to kill all Jewish baby boys as a foreshadowing of Herod’s attempt to kill the baby Jesus by slaughtering all baby boys in and around Bethlehem, and Matthew included this interpretation in his gospel. Matthew continues his story by having Jesus escape to Egypt and then return to Israel, as a way of presenting Jesus as another Moses returning to Israel just as Moses had. For Matthew, Jesus’ journey from Egypt is an even more important event than Moses’ journey from Egypt to the promised land because Jesus leads the whole of humanity back to our promised land.
Can we have Matthew’s certainty that God is acting as powerfully today?
Mark 8.27-9.1 What’s Mark about?
This is the turning-point in Mark’s gospel, as the disciples move from being amazed, to starting to grasp the implications of Jesus—the kingdom really is arriving. Jesus immediately insists that his death will be an essential aspect of this, and Peter refuses to be part of that. Peter doesn’t see properly. Remember the blind man yesterday?
This is the first of three occasions in which Jesus’ followers refuse to accept that loving sacrifices are necessary for the kingdom to happen.
Perhaps the same is true for us. Nevertheless, we are still invited into the kingdom when it fully arrives. Then we will see fully and be able to undertake joyfully the implications of such love.
This week’s collect:
Gracious Father,
whose blessed Son came from heaven
to be the true bread which gives life to the world,
evermore give us this bread,
that he may live in us, and we in him,
who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever. Amen.
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