Tuesday February 16 Epiphany 6
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Psalm 26
I do not sit down with the wicked: this gives us words to say how we wish to live, that deep in our heart we really are such people as keep God’s commands to love and do justice. “My foot stands on level ground” because we ground our lives on the solid base of justice.
Psalm 28
Like many psalms, this asks that the wicked be punished: “give them their just deserts.” (“Deserts” is “What is deserved”, not miles of sand or misspelled sweets!) This desire for evil people to be destroyed seems very unlike Jesus’ request that we forgive our enemies and love them, but it is really giving us words to express our own intense desire that oppressive and violent policies should come to an end. We might pray, “May any international trade agreements that make the poor even poorer, be utterly done away with.” The violent images in many psalms are not to ask God to be violent, but to ask that all evil actions and policies be completely defeated so the world can live in peace and fulfilment. The second half of the psalm gives thanks that God has indeed been victorious over oppression.
Isaiah 63: 7-14
Isaiah encourages the people to anticipate their return to Jerusalem by re-telling the story of how God acted to rescue them from Egypt. If God could do that once, God can do it again.
Mark 11: 12-25
The story of Jesus cursing a fig tree is likely a parable Jesus told which was later misinterpreted as a actual event. Israel was often called God’s fig tree, and around the time Mark’s gospel was written, the temple in Jerusalem was permanently destroyed by the Roman empire. So the fig tree being cursed is an image of Jerusalem being destroyed by the Roman army.
As Mark often does, he wraps one story around another: he wraps the story of the fig tree around the story of poor people being exploited in the temple. Money changers were forcing worshippers to pay exorbitant taxes to the priests who passed the money on to the Roman emperor. Jesus objects to extortion of the poorest people to support the wealthy in Rome and is incensed that this would happen in the building dedicated to the God of justice whose priority is to include the poor. By wrapping the cursed fig tree around the cursing of the exploitation of the poor, Mark is clarifying that the abandonment of God’s justice in the temple is what caused it to be destroyed.
This is a popular message among the masses of poor people so it’s no wonder the priests and others start to look for ways to execute Jesus. The danger is becoming intense—in four days he will be executed for this insistence on justice for the poor—and so each night Jesus leaves the dangerous city for the safety of the country.
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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