Friday January 20 Epiphany 2
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Psalm 31
I am being attacked from all sides but trust that God will rescue me. In Luke’s gospel, Jesus quotes from this psalm as he is dying. Appropriate for Friday as the weekly mini-anniversary of the crucifixion.
Isaiah 45: 18-25 What’s Isaiah about?
God created the world, triumphing over chaos and in the same way will end the chaos of the nations attacking Israel. Only God could know this would happen—the idols of the nations attacking know nothing and are worse than useless. Only the God of righteousness can bring justice and that justice will be unstoppable. Can we cultivate such an expectation for our day?
In this passage we also hear another of Isaiah’s themes, that God’s power in creating the universe is now being experienced as God’s power to bring justice and restoration to those who are being crushed. Here and throughout the Hebrew Bible “righteousness” meant bringing fairness and respect and dignity to the downtrodden. I didn’t mean someone who kept all the religious expectations as it now means. In Isaiah’s time the downtrodden were the entire country in exile.
Mark 4: 35-41 What’s Mark about?
Like many miracles, the significance of this miracle of the calming of a storm lies in its meaning. To people of Jesus’ time the waves swamping the boat would have meant the return of the original chaos in Genesis 1 which the Spirit had overcome at the beginning of creation, and the storm would have been understood as the Roman empire threatening to drown Judaism, which of course happened a couple of decades later when Rome destroyed the temple. Jesus calming the storm would have meant that God was re-enacting the original wholeness and goodness of creation against the worst the world can do.
We can apply this miracle to the storms inside us or in the wider world as being ultimately under God’s control. In tomorrow’s reading, Jesus calms the storm inside a person overwhelmed by evil. Good news indeed—God’s kingdom really is emerging!
This week’s collect:
Almighty God,
your Son our Saviour Jesus Christ
is the light of the world.
May your people,
illumined by your word and sacraments,
shine with the radiance of his glory,
that he may be known, worshipped, and obeyed
to the ends of the earth;
who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever. Amen.
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