Wednesday April 6 Lent 5
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Psalm 119 Part 7
Psalm 119 is a meditation on responding to God’s call to justice. Each of the 176 verses is a variation on the theme of what it means to follow God’s call to justice, using terms such as “command”,”law”, “word”, “statute”, and the like. The psalm is arranged in 22 groups of eight verses—one group for each letter of the Hebrew alphabet. Within a group, each of the eight verses starts with the same letter of the Hebrew alphabet, and the groups are in Hebrew alphabetical order. So the first group of eight verses all start with A, the second group all start with B and so on. The first seven verses mirror the seven days of creation, with the eighth sometimes pointing to the next group. This very careful construction mirrors God’s creating the universe by overcoming chaos with order.
In the human world, justice, dignity and fulfilment – the outcomes of justice—are the human expressions of order. Thus the human world and the rest of creation are united in the same foundation. Today’s three sections begin with the letters Q, R, S, and T, the final letters of the Hebrew alphabet. As you read them, imagine the effect of each line in today’s first section beginning with “Q” and so on.
Exodus 7: 8-24 What’s Exodus about?
Now begins a series of contests between the God of Israel and Pharaoh. The God of Israel stands for liberation of the oppressed, and Pharaoh and his magicians stand for those in power who exploit the weak. The God of Israel, who has promised that Abraham the wanderer will be the ancestor of a great nation, keeps raising the bar against the forces of slavery. The story is deliberately more and more dramatic as Pharaoh’s resistance grows and each time is bested by God’s superior power and covenant loyalty to the oppressed Israelites.
Mark 10: 1-16 What’s Mark about?
Jesus commends a covenant between husband and wife that mirrors the covenant that God made with Israel—deep loyalty does not look for a way out of relationships. Divorce in those days was a simple process by which a husband could treat his wife like something he owned, and get himself a new wife as he wished. Refusing to affirm the breaking of that loyalty for selfish purposes was a new standard which Jesus applied equally to women—an unimaginable dignity and responsibility for women at the time. Jesus then enacts another radical inclusivity by declaring that children are foundational to the kingdom of God. The kingdom is being enacted by challenging the deepest assumptions about what is normal and who is important in everyday life.
This week’s collect:
Most merciful God,
by the death and resurrection
of your Son Jesus Christ,
you created humanity anew.
May the power of his victorious cross
transform those who turn in faith
to him who lives and reigns with you
and the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever. Amen.
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