Friday February 10 Epiphany 5
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Psalm 88
A lament that I have been crushed and am beyond hope. When I am dead, there is nothing left, there is no life beyond the grave. Astonishingly, to be fully with us, Jesus enters completely into such a death.
This psalm is appropriately read on a Friday as Jesus is placed in the grave. Only God’s act, on Saturday night—the eve of the resurrection—can reverse death—even Jesus’ death. That’s the only hope there is.
Isaiah 61: 1-9 What’s Isaiah about?
Isaiah continues to predict unimaginable prosperity for Jerusalem where all is just. God ensures this prosperity will happen because God loves justice.
Jesus quotes this passage as applying to himself when he comes out of the wilderness temptations following his baptism. Early Christians understood that Jesus was the renewed Jerusalem for the whole world.
Mark 10.32-45 What’s Mark about?
Jesus is deliberately walking towards confrontation with the oppressive authorities in Jerusalem. This is the third time in a row that Jesus insists that God’s love involves God sacrificing God’s self for us, God’s beloved.
The disciples, for the third time, want nothing to do with this—this time they want to make a secret deal to sit at the head table in heaven with Jesus. They do not want to die for God’s kingdom, they only want safety and success.
Of course, the disciples are us. Our world is in such difficulty because safety and success are the priorities of human cultures. Even today it is almost unimaginable that a culture would make significant sacrifices for the well-being of others. But there is hope—God is acting, in Jesus, to reverse what is “normal”.
Tomorrow we read about the second healing of a blind person, clearly symbolizing the disciples who are blind to God’s call to love at cost.
This week’s collect:
Merciful Lord,
grant to your faithful people pardon and peace,
that we may be cleansed from all our sins
and serve you with a quiet mind;
through Jesus Christ our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever. Amen.
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