Tuesday February 14 Epiphany 6
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Psalm 97
God’s power in creation is an expression of God’s commitment to justice—righteousness and justice are the foundations of God’s throne (the same image is used in Psalm 89) and therefore of all creation. We can count on God to uphold those who are without power as surely as we experience enormous power in creation.
A wonderful image for our age when science shows us so much power in creation – dignity and justice are equally embedded in the way God has put the world together.
Psalm 99
God’s justice was shown in the way God rescued the people from slavery and cared for them throughout history. Praise the Lord!
Psalm 100
A short hymn of praise that God has remained faithful forever.
Isaiah 63: 7-14 What’s Isaiah about?
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 long ago, God can do it again, now.
Mark 11: 12-25 What’s Mark about?
The story of Jesus cursing a fig tree is likely a parable Jesus told about Jerusalem 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 a fig tree being cursed was understood to be an image of Jerusalem being cursed and destroyed by the Roman army.
As Mark often does, he wraps one story around another: he wraps the story of the fig tree (referring, for Mark, to the destruction of Jerusalem) around the story of poor people being exploited in the temple.
Money changers were exploiting poor worshippers by forcing them to pay exorbitant fees just to get into the temple built to the God of justice. The money changers did so because they could keep a portion of the fees, but transferred most of the money on to the Roman emperor. Imagine how the poor felt about being forced to fund the empire which was exploiting them!
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 upholding the poor. Throwing over the tables is a public act of civil disobedience symbolizing his desire to throw over the oppressive empire and its economic system. It’s not unlike the act of civil disobedience he did the day before mocking the Roman general’s military entrance into Jerusalem.
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 hugely 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—four days later 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 anonymity in 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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