Tuesday April 12 Tuesday in Holy Week
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Psalm 6
I have been hounded almost to death, help me, God. Thanks be to God that God heard me and the evil people will be overcome.
Psalm 12
Everyone has abandoned truth and justice. I stand alone against this injustice. It is when God sees injustice that God acts. Save us, God, evil is prevailing.
Lamentations 1.17-22 What’s Lamentations about?
Six hundred years before Jesus, Jerusalem has been attacked and devastated. The prophet is imagining Jerusalem groaning in pain. Early Christians understood such passages as applying to the sufferings of Jesus which is why we read them now in anticipation of Jesus’ execution this Friday.
Mark 11.27-33 What’s Mark about?
On Sunday Jesus had mocked the Roman army, on Monday he had disrupted the religious extortion of money used to pay for the occupation, so today he is confronted. He claims John the Baptist as his mentor, which puts the authorities in a quandary—if they agree with John the Baptist, the Romans may execute them the way they executed John for starting a rebellion, and if they disagree with John, the people will hold them in contempt as collaborators with the Romans. Jesus is forcing them to reveal their preference: either collaboration with the Roman oppressors or support of the new kingdom of God. Jesus has made his choice clear on Sunday and Monday, but his accusers demur. They don’t want to admit that their choice is not for the kingdom of justice but for the wealth and power that comes from collaborating with Roman oppression.
Today’s collect:
O God,
by the passion of your blessed Son,
you made an instrument of shameful death
to be for us the means of life.
May our lives be so transformed by his passion
that we may witness to his grace;
who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever. Amen.
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