Wednesday February 1 Epiphany 4
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Psalm 72
A prayer that the king will rule with justice for the poor, and that as a result all will have more than enough to live fully. This can easily applied as a prayer for our political leaders today.
Early Christians saw in this psalm, perhaps originally intended as a prayer that king David would rule with justice, an affirmation of the new world order being instituted by the birth of Christ.
Isaiah 54: 1-17 What’s Isaiah about?
God tells the people (symbolized by the barren city of Jerusalem) to rejoice if they had no children (which was a personal and social disaster then) because now they will have so many they will have to enlarge their homes and the city! This will happen because God will become the husband of their city and land. This is a very startling image Isaiah is using. God will adorn God’s wife—the city of Jerusalem—with abundant jewels. As God swore to Noah not to flood the world again, so God will never abandon the people and they will be safe forever.
Mark 8: 11-26 What’s Mark about?
The religious leaders want Jesus to prove he is God because then they can accuse him of blasphemy. Jesus refuses because his role is not to prove who belongs and who doesn’t, but to usher in God’s society in which all are included. He then makes clear to his disciples that everyone, regardless of background, belongs in God’s society—that was the point of the two overwhelmingly generous feedings—for both Jews and non-Jews.
That was an unimaginable leap into equality that the disciples cannot comprehend. Because the disciples don’t see what the implications are, Mark recounts Jesus healing someone who can’t see. However, this healing is only partial at first. In the same way the disciples’ eyes are about to be opened but even so they will see only partially at first.
This week’s collect:
Living God,
in Christ you make all things new.
Transform the poverty of our nature
by the riches of your grace,
and in the renewal of our lives
make known your glory;
through Jesus Christ our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever. Amen.
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