Thursday February 16 Epiphany 6
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Psalm 105 Part 1
Praise to God for caring for and protecting the people—God looked after them before they were enslaved in Egypt, and prepared them for rescue from famine by arranging for Joseph to become the Pharaoh’s senior officer. God is committed through a covenant to do this forever. The second half of the poem will continue the story with God’s rescue of them from Egypt, God’s care for them in the wilderness, and God’s gift of a promised land.
Psalm 100
A short hymn of praise that God has remained faithful forever.
Isaiah 65: 1-12 What’s Isaiah about?
Even though the people were faithless, God constantly waited for them to return. Even though God ought to have repaid them for their evil, and there were consequences for their evil, God ensured they were not destroyed.
Mark 12: 13-27 What’s Mark about?
The challenges to Jesus grow more intense. He is challenged to make a public commitment either to pay tribute to Rome or not. Whichever he chooses, the leaders can arrest him. He can be arrested for blasphemy if he chooses the emperor (because the emperor claims to be god), or for treason against the emperor if he refuses. Jesus points to the picture of the emperor on the coins, and to the inscription which identifies the emperor as God, and he replies that we must all give God what is due to God, and give to the emperor what is due to the emperor. But what he means is that nobody owes anything to the emperor because the emperor owns nothing—God is in charge of the world, not the Roman emperor! This is not just a clever trick on Jesus’ part—he is challenging all our assumptions about who runs the world and to whom we give our loyalty.
The next challenge to Jesus is to ridicule the idea of resurrection with the suggestion that if resurrection is true, a widow of many husbands would have to commit adultery in heaven when they all came back to life! Jesus responds that God is interested in people who are alive now and not interested in clever arguments. While amusing to us, these were attacks which, if successful, could carry the death penalty. The more Jesus insists on loyalty to the God of justice and inclusion, the more those in power are determined to attack and silence him forever.
This week’s collect:
Almighty and everliving God,
whose Son Jesus Christ healed the sick
and restored them to wholeness of life,
look with compassion on the anguish of the world,
and by your power make whole all peoples and nations;
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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