Saturday April 9 Lent 5
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Psalm 137
Another psalm expressing terrible grief that the nation had been abandoned. When the people were captured and taken to Babylon about 700 years before Jesus, they were asked to amuse their captors with funny songs, and were horrified to have to entertain those who had destroyed their land and the glorious temple dedicated to justice.
The concluding couple of verses of this psalm are disturbingly violent. We sometimes also feel violent when we are abused, so there is an honest recognition of that truth here. Or we can think of this part as a commitment to ensuring that all evil should be completely removed from the world.
Psalm 144
This psalm expresses the feeling that we are not very strong in face of terrible forces, but that God can act to save us, and the end result will be unimaginable prosperity and happiness.
Exodus 10:21—11:8 What’s Exodus about?
God brings darkness for three days, but Pharaoh is not persuaded. The seventh warning (seven is a significant number) is that God promises one final disaster, that all the first-born of the Egyptians will be killed, but Israel will be spared, and Pharaoh will let the people go. This is an astonishing claim—that the God of a tiny group of people in slavery is more powerful than the emperor of a super-power. The challenge to us is to ask if we believe this is still true—that the God of justice is more powerful than the oppressive rulers and policies of our time.
Following Holy Week we will continue to read through this saga of God’s triumph over oppression by the powerful. Starting tomorrow, during Holy Week we will read accounts of how Jerusalem was devastated by the Assyrians six hundred years before Jesus. Early Christians applied these laments to Jesus’ approaching death.
Mark 10: 46-52 What’s Mark about?
Mark has concluded the three stories of the disciples’ rejection of Jesus’ call to give themselves away in love. Before the first of these three rejections, Jesus healed a blind man who didn’t see properly at first. Now, at the end of the three rejections, Jesus heals another blind man who immediately sees accurately. It’s clear that the disciples’ blindness, about how God’s kingdom arrives, is about to be completely cured. When he is cured, the blind man “followed Jesus on the way” and Jesus doesn’t send him away as he sent the first blind man away. When you see what’s going on with this death and resurrection, you become part of the new kingdom.
“The Way” is what Christianity was originally called and in the very next verse, “the way” is the actual physical path to Jerusalem and the first Palm Sunday and five days later Jesus’ death. In his resurrection his followers will clearly see that dying to a life of injustice and exploitation is the only “way” to be fully alive and for the kingdom to arrive among us. Jesus’ own death and resurrection makes this possible for the entire world—everyone can then clearly see how the kingdom comes.
This week’s collect:
Most merciful God,
by the death and resurrection
of your Son Jesus Christ,
you created humanity anew.
May the power of his victorious cross
transform those who turn in faith
to him who lives and reigns with you
and the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever. Amen.
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