Monday February 1 Epiphany 4
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Psalm 56
In the face of intense attack by evil, we trust that God will act for what is right.
Psalm 57
Another psalm expressing our trust that God will act for what is right in the face of intense attack by evil.
Isaiah 51: 17-23
In the first half of this poem, using images of drunkenness and devastation, God describes the desolation in which the inhabitants of Jerusalem find themselves. They are crushed and without hope. Although the drunkenness comes at the hand of God’s wrath, we are to understand, in the bigger picture, that the horrors of enslavement by Babylon don’t arise from God being angry but as the inevitable consequences of the nation having abandoned the priority of justice for all, which is the character of God.
In the second half, God reverses the image and says God will stand on the side of the devastated people and against those who treated the people like a street to walk on. The oppressors will be made to be drunk with disaster. That’s how just and strong God is.
Mark 7: 24-37
Having just declared that purity arises from one’s intentions and not from external behaviour, Jesus travels to the province in which the aboriginal people lived, the people whom Joshua had been commanded to exterminate when the Israelites first entered the promised land. For faithful Jews of Jesus’ time, these people were dirty, immoral and contaminated. In an unimaginable insult to a man, one of the aboriginal women argues with Jesus, trying to force him to heal her daughter and wins the argument! Jesus heals her child.
Jesus then heals an aboriginal man in the same province. In verse 34, the translation says Jesus “sighed” when looking up to God, but more accurately it means something like he “grunted” or “roared with anger”—it means that Jesus was incensed that people—especially those who had been abused and crushed for their culture—were still suffering like this deaf man. Jesus is reversing the abuse carried out by his ancestors and commanded by scripture. This was a highly provocative and risky act which undermined the most fundamental beliefs of his own Jewish people at that time.
Next, Jesus will feed a staggering number of aboriginal people and will come under severe criticism by the religious leaders.
This week’s collect:
Living God,
in Christ you make all things new.
Transform the poverty of our nature
by the riches of your grace,
and in the renewal of our lives
make known your glory;
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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