Tuesday January 10 Epiphany 1
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Psalm 5
There is evil all around, but I will go into your presence, O God, and know that you are more powerful than all evil and will protect us.
Psalm 6
I have been hounded almost to death, help me, God. Thanks be to God that God heard me and the evil people will be overcome.
Isaiah 40: 25-31 What’s Isaiah about?
Isaiah continues the image of God as hugely powerful behind the universe, and therefore entirely able to rescue the people from Babylon. “Lift up your eyes and see…” in this context means “Look at the stars…”
Mark 1: 14-28 What’s Mark about?
John is arrested, and Jesus appears and proclaims that the kingdom is very close. He has discovered how the kingdom arrives: his first words in Mark’s gospel insist that the kingdom is not only coming sometime in the future, but is on the verge of breaking in right now. This is a whole new approach to how God’s kingdom arrives, and on that basis he calls his first disciples. All are fisher people whose lives have been crushed by the Roman taxation on all fish caught in the lake.
Jesus encounters evil in the form of an “unclean” evil spirit, and Jesus enables the kingdom to actually take place—evil knows exactly what is going on, and the person overcome by evil is set free from it. It’s clear that the horrors of evil haunting the people are the horrors of being under the heel of the unclean Roman empire, and the empire is threatened! People are amazed—they see the kingdom actually happening!
This week’s collect:
Eternal Father,
who at the baptism of Jesus
revealed him to be your Son,
anointing him with the Holy Spirit,
keep your children, born of water and the Spirit,
faithful to their calling;
through Jesus Christ our Lord,
who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever. Amen.
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