Friday April 1 Lent 4
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Psalm 102
A lament at the destruction of Jerusalem 600 years before Jesus. It ends with hope of God’s faithfulness. The imagery of desolation is appropriate for Fridays, the mini-anniversary of Jesus being betrayed, abandoned, and in hours will be dead. Yet God will remain faithful.
Exodus 2: 1-22 What’s Exodus about?
The Pharaoh’s daughter adopts one of the Egyptian boys, accidentally has his own mother nurse him, and then names him ‘Moses’ which is a pun on a Hebrew word meaning “draw out of water.”
Notice how, like Joseph, he ends up as a foreigner living in an Egyptian household. Like Joseph with Potiphar’s wife, Moses will also be expelled from his Egyptian home, in his case for resisting the oppression of his people and killing an Egyptian overseer. He flees Egypt, marries and settles down as a shepherd.
Moses wants no more to do with claiming freedom for his people. It looks as if God’s plan for the Israelites to become a great nation will fail because they have no leader.
Mark 9.2-13 What’s Mark about?
Jesus has just spoken about some seeing the resurrection before they die. Then he takes three disciples see him in his resurrected glory—before they have died. Even having seen that glory, they do not yet understand when Jesus speaks again about his suffering. They have not yet understood that love can require the joyful giving up of our life—that is, dying and rising with Christ.
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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