Monday January 9 Epiphany 1
Click here for simplified daily office prayers
Psalm 1
Those who live in righteousness—which means with justice to all—will be as strong as healthy trees planted near water. Injustice will be blown away like chaff.
Psalm 2
Other nations scorn God and God’s people, but God has chosen this people and their king, and God will have the final word.
Christians may understand this to be a way of saying that God has made self-offering love and justice in the death and resurrection of Christ to be the ultimate reality. All other attempts at finding full life through pursuing self-interest are laughable and doomed to fail.
Psalm 3
Because of God’s protection, I have nothing to fear.
Isaiah 40:12-23 What’s Isaiah about?
If the people doubted God’s ability to return them home to Jerusalem, Isaiah describes God as so great that all the super powers are but a pinch of dust in comparison to the God who spreads out the stars as effortlessly as if they were a mere piece of cloth. Such a God can easily act to return the people to their home. This global power of God related to God’s power over the entire universe is a new perspective developed by the author of this second section of Isaiah.
Mark 1: 1-13 What’s Mark about?
We have concluded the Epiphany focus on the coming of Jesus into the world and today we start reading through Mark’s gospel.
Mark begins his gospel with a quotation from Isaiah about the people being returned to Jerusalem—Mark will demonstrate that is happening again in Jesus. Jesus commits himself to John’s call to enact the kingdom by crossing the Jordan river, as Joshua did long ago, and Jesus is immediately affirmed.
But then he is driven into a wilderness, perhaps of terrible doubt. He may be aware that John is about to be executed and may wonder if Isaiah’s and John’s prophecies of the kingdom are impossible after all. But something happens to him in the wilderness of doubt and we see the astonishing outcome tomorrow.
This week’s collect:
Eternal Father,
who at the baptism of Jesus
revealed him to be your Son,
anointing him with the Holy Spirit,
keep your children, born of water and the Spirit,
faithful to their calling;
through Jesus Christ our Lord,
who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever. Amen.
Click here to share your thoughts on the web site.