Author: Harold

Monday February 3          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                            What’s Isaiah about?
In the first half of this poem, using images of drunkenness and devastation, God describes the desolation of Jerusalem in which the city has been left abandoned after the people were taken in slavery to Babylon. Although this disaster came from God’s wrath, the cause is never that God is angry, but as the inevitable consequences of the nation having abandoned the priority of justice for all, which is the character of God. Instead the people have become drunk on the desire for wealth and oppression of the poor. No wonder Jerusalem is devastated.

But in the second half of this poem, 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. Instead, the oppressors will be made to be drunk with disaster. That’s how just and strong God is. The people are to count on God acting with justice to restore Jerusalem. The poem challenges us to ask if we are able to trust in God’s power of justice in our day.

Mark 7: 24-37                            What’s Mark about?
Having just declared that purity arises from one’s intentions and not from being religious, 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. One of the aboriginal women argues with Jesus, an unimaginable insult to a man in those times, trying to force him to heal her daughter. And, even worse, she wins the argument! In response, Jesus heals her child.
Jesus then heals an aboriginal man. In verse 34, the translation says Jesus “sighed” when looking up to God, but more accurately it means something like he “growled” or “roared with anger”—it means that Jesus was incensed that people—especially these aboriginal people who had been abused and crushed—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.

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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Sunday February 2          Epiphany 4

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Psalm 24
While entering through the doors of the temple the poet sings a hymn of praise to God who brought order out of the dangerous primordial ocean. Appropriate for a Sunday as we enter into our worship.

Psalm 29
Astonishment at the overwhelming presence of God in nature who rules the untameable ocean and even makes mountains cavort like calves and oak trees “writhe” in a gale! We worship such a God, who makes such strength and peace available to us.

Isaiah 51: 9-16                            What’s Isaiah about?
The people, imprisoned in Babylon request that God act now to return them as God did when the original chaos was overcome and when God made the sea dry at the Exodus. God responds that the people don’t trust because they fear the Babylonians, but rescue is certain and the people are not to be afraid of anyone, because of God’s power over all the world. Notice the repeated reference here and earlier to God stretching out the heavens like a cloth—the stars, once thought to be the source of uncontrollable influence on events on earth turn out to be, for God, just a cloth or a curtain to be hung or folded up—there is nothing to be afraid of on earth or in heaven!

John 7: 14-31                            What’s John about?
On Sundays we continue to read from John’s gospel. In this passage, two critiques of Jesus are presented. First, Jesus is challenged for teaching when he has no training—therefore his critics say his teaching cannot be trusted. Jesus replies that he isn’t teaching from his own knowledge, but from God’s, and anyone who has experienced God will recognize that. Therefore the leaders don’t know God or they would affirm what Jesus says. Jesus then accuses his critics of not knowing what they are teaching—they circumcise on the Sabbath, which involves injuring one part of a male baby, but criticize him when on the Sabbath he heals an adult man’s whole body! Now wonder there was such an intense reaction to him!
Second, Jesus is accused of not having a mysterious origin as (in their interpretation) the true messiah should and therefore he cannot be the messiah. In response, Jesus claims his origin really is mysterious because he is from God but they don’t know God—so for them his origin will of course be mysterious.

These are highly condensed and deeply symbolic conversations which present the various responses that early Christians made to the accusation if that time that Jesus wasn’t significant.

The issue for us is not whether these arguments effectively prove or disprove that Jesus is from God, but whether through Jesus we experience God’s challenge to our way of life, and God’s offer of new life.  If we think of Jesus as a good person who lived a good life long ago, then nothing has changed and there’s no hope of transformation, because he’s not really significant. The critics would be right. But if it’s God’s character we are seeing in Jesus, the character of unimaginably generous love, then everything is transformed. The choice we make about whether Jesus was a good person or was a window into God’s character has huge implications.

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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Friday January 31          Epiphany 3

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Psalm 40
All my life God lifted me up and I rejoiced in God’s care. But now my own sin, and my enemies, have nearly destroyed me. Do not wait any longer, God!

Psalm 54
I am in dire straights. Put everything back to right, God. I praise you, because you have done that.

Isaiah 50.1-11                            What’s Isaiah about?
The people are rejecting Isaiah’s proposal that God is merciful and is rescuing them, and they accuse God of abandoning them and selling them into slavery in Babylon and of having abandoned their mother (Jerusalem).

In response God replies that it was the people’s abandoning of justice and dignity that has resulted in their slavery. It’s not God’s fault because there are no legal documents of God divorcing Jerusalem or receipts for their sale.

Isaiah then describes the abuse he has taken for insisting that God cares and will rescue the people, and that it was their fault that they have been conquered.

Mark 6: 47-56                            What’s Mark about?
Jesus walks over the water during a storm. This is another miracle with a meaning. Walking on the water in a storm (not walking across a swimming pool!) means that God is king over all storms. The original readers would have understood this story to be a reference to the Spirit hovering over the original chaos in the first chapter of Genesis.
Mark tells this story because storms are starting to arise around Jesus—he was accused of being the devil, his hometown turned against him, and Herod executed his cousin. Yet Herod’s violence cannot prevent Jesus creating a feast for five thousand people from the few fish Herod hasn’t taken, and Jesus is clearly seen to be the calmer of all storms. We, too, can be calm because God in Jesus can walk safely through the storms in our lives.

This week’s collect:

Almighty God,
by grace alone you call us
and accept us in your service.
Strengthen us by your Spirit,
and make us worthy of your call;
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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Thursday January 30          Epiphany 3

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Psalm 50
This psalm imagines God’s response to the people carrying out their religious practices but doing evil and abandoning justice. Rather than simply reacting or punishing, God lays out the case as if God were taking them to court—the idea is that God is being completely fair and getting an unbiased opinion about what the people have done. They have refused to be thankful for what God has done for them in rescuing them from Egypt and have substituted religion for being just to their own poor people and if this continues there will be consequences, but if they return to justice and thanksgiving all will be well.

Isaiah 49: 13-23                            What’s Isaiah about?
In captivity far away, the people imagine that Jerusalem assumes God had forgotten the city, but God compares God’s self to a woman nursing her baby—a startling image then as now—in the same way as a new mother, God will never forget Jerusalem.

God will give the people prosperity and make the Babylonians serve them by carrying their children back to Jerusalem—Babylon’s kings will become their foster-fathers and Babylon’s queens will become their wet nurses! (Note that God had become a nursing mother to the newborn people a couple of verses earlier.) The people will grow so much that there won’t be room for them in the city!

God’s ability to put things right is without limit. Knowing that would make all the difference to us in a time when so many forces of destruction oppress us.

Mark 6: 30-46                            What’s Mark about?
When the news of John’s execution reaches Jesus, he and his disciples wisely withdraw—into the wilderness, just as Jesus did when he first realized John would be executed.
But in the wilderness an astonishing thing happens. Despite Herod’s violent fury against John the Baptist and his followers, Jesus feeds five thousand people and has dozens of baskets of food left over from a tiny amount of original food. Despite being near the lake they can find only two small fish to eat—this near-starvation has been caused by Herod’s policy of over-fishing the lake to pay for his enormous construction projects, leaving the local people to starve. So it’s a miracle with a meaning. No matter how little food there is, or little safety, or little faith, God can take whatever little there is produce from it far more than we can imagine.

It’s crystal clear who is really in charge. Abusive power and violence can do its worst, but God’s generosity continues unabated, pouring food upon those who are hungry. If we also trust in that overarching generosity, we will be enabled to regain the generosity of full human nature in our time.

This week’s collect:

Almighty God,
by grace alone you call us
and accept us in your service.
Strengthen us by your Spirit,
and make us worthy of your call;
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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Wednesday January 29          Epiphany 3

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Psalm 119 Part 3
Psalm 119 is a meditation on responding to God’s call to justice. Each of the 176 verses is a variation on the theme of what it means to follow God’s call to justice, using terms such as “command”,”law”, “word”, “statute”, and the like. The psalm is arranged in 22 groups of eight verses—one group for each letter of the Hebrew alphabet. Within a group, each of the eight verses starts with the same letter of the Hebrew alphabet, and the groups are in Hebrew alphabetical order. So the first group of eight verses all start with A, the second group all start with B and so on. The first seven verses mirror the seven days of creation, with the eighth sometimes pointing to the next group. This very careful construction mirrors God’s creating the universe by overcoming chaos with order.

In the human world, justice, dignity and fulfilment – the outcomes of justice—are the human expressions of order. Thus the human world and the rest of creation are united in the same foundation. Today’s three sections begin with the letters Z, H, and Th (in Hebrew alphabetical order). As you read them, imagine the effect of each line in today’s first section beginning with “Z” and so on.

Isaiah 49: 1-12                            What’s Isaiah about?
This passage begins with two references to the people being in the womb—possibly a hint that God is the womb, a daring poetic suggestion. It is as if God is giving birth a second time as Israel begins life anew back in Jerusalem. But there is an entirely new role for the rescued people—not just that they will be able to worship again in the temple, but that they will become the channel by which the entire world will know God’s character of bringing justice and fulfilment for all.

King Herod executes Jesus’ cousin, John the Baptist. For Herod, a Jewish puppet king who had sold his soul to support Roman oppression, John was a terrorist who had been encouraging people to overthrow the Roman empire. Since Jesus is a relative of John, and had joined John’s disciples and had been baptized by him not long before, Jesus is also under the threat of execution. Mark may be including the gory details of John’s execution in anticipation of what will ultimately happen to Jesus.

Mark 6: 13-29                            What’s Mark about?
King Herod executes Jesus’ cousin, John the Baptist. For Herod, a Jewish puppet king who had sold his soul to support Roman oppression, John was a terrorist who had been encouraging people to anticipate the overthrow of the Roman empire. Since Jesus is a relative of John, and had joined John’s disciples and had been baptized by him not long before, Jesus is also under the threat of execution. Mark may be including the gory details of John’s execution in anticipation of what will ultimately happen to Jesus.

This week’s collect:

Almighty God,
by grace alone you call us
and accept us in your service.
Strengthen us by your Spirit,
and make us worthy of your call;
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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Tuesday January 28          Epiphany 3

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Psalm 45
A poem about King David, using the imagery of an ancient oriental king, describing his personal and public magnificence and the glory of his relationship with the queen. Note that his prime duty is to serve truth and justice.

We can read this poem as a description of our own fulfilled self and relationships which have been made possible for us in union with Christ’s resurrection.

Isaiah 48: 12-21                            What’s Isaiah about?
Since God laid the solid foundations of the world and the stars stand at attention when God calls, God can easily call King Cyrus of the super-power Persia to defeat the Babylonians and allow the people to return to Jerusalem. It would all have been better if the people had been loyal to God all along because then their prosperity would have been unimaginable and they would never have been invaded, but even so, God has acted in a totally new way. Just as God made water flow from solid rock in the desert a thousand years earlier when God called the people out of Egypt and cared for them in the desert, so now (later in this passage) God will make water flow in the Syrian desert so the people can walk home without fear.

Isaiah is a very clever poet! And profound thinker.

Mark 6: 1-13                            What’s Mark about?
The opposition to Jesus is starting to become more intense. First his own home town rejects him, and when he sends out his disciples they are prepared for rejection on their travels even though the kingdom is breaking in around them.
Immediately after this passage, King Herod will execute Jesus’ cousin—a very threatening event in the ancient world—because anyone related to someone who has been beheaded is in imminent danger of execution themselves. Violent opposition is emerging to God’s kingdom of fulfillment for everyone.

This week’s collect:

Almighty God,
by grace alone you call us
and accept us in your service.
Strengthen us by your Spirit,
and make us worthy of your call;
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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Monday January 27          Epiphany 3

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Psalm 41
Just as we care for the poor and needy, so God cares for us. I am needy in that I have sinned and my enemies and even my friends are all conspiring against me and hoping that I will die. All I can do is trust that God will protect me.

When we, or our world, seem to have little hope, we ground ourselves in knowing God holds us fast.

Psalm 52
Cruel powerful people seem to run the world, but we trust that God will enable the world to be as fertile as a green olive tree and evil will be ended.

Isaiah 48: 1-11                            What’s Isaiah about?
God insists that the act of bringing Cyrus to defeat the Assyrians and so allow the Israelites to return to Jerusalem, is God’s own free act. Some Israelites may have been opposing Isaiah by saying that nothing like this was ever predicted in the scriptures, but Isaiah turns that argument on its head: if Cyrus letting them go was never predicted in scripture, that proves that God does completely new things that nobody could have anticipated! That was as revolutionary a claim then as it is now: God can ignore what’s in the Bible—keeping the covenant and implementing justice for all now is more important than ancient acts recorded or prophesied in scripture.

Mark 5: 21-43                            What’s Mark about?
Jesus has calmed a storm on a lake, then inside a person, and now calms storms inside two women. The first woman was an outcast because of her constant menstrual bleeding and could never have children and was socially ostracized being considered highly infectious. She would be considered a failure and hardly even an adult because in that culture having a child is what made a woman a full adult. Jesus then heals a little girl, whose illness at age 12 almost prevented her from ever becoming an adult. This little girl had been born at the same time as the adult woman first became ill. Obviously there are several layers of meaning in these two stories which are intertwined around each other.
Jesus is healing all the things that keep us from being our full selves and coming into maturity, and particularly those who are oppressed—such as women in the ancient world. These healings are more than just of individual bodies—Jesus is healing the body of society from being prejudiced, stunted and unfulfilled. The kingdom of God really is arriving.

This week’s collect:

Almighty God,
by grace alone you call us
and accept us in your service.
Strengthen us by your Spirit,
and make us worthy of your call;
through Jesus Christ our Lord,
who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever. Amen.

one God, now and for ever. Amen.

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Sunday January 26          Epiphany 3

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Psalm 63
I delight in the certainty of God’s protection and victory over evil. The violence in verses 9 and 10 can be understood as an expression of our intense desire that all evil will come to an end.

Psalm 98
The people, the nations, and the whole of creation delight in God’s victory and rejoice when God comes to put all creation right. This psalm is used at Easter, and is often used on Sundays, mini-anniversaries of Easter. There is some lovely imagery of the sea deliberately making a noise with its waves and rivers doing the same by clapping their hands.

Isaiah 47: 1-15                            What’s Isaiah about?
The Babylonians, who had enslaved the Israelites and deported them to Babylon, are about to be conquered by Cyrus. Isaiah interprets this as God controlling history and punishing the Babylonians for having treated God’s people cruelly. No matter how great is the enormous power of such a country, God can change everything and bring their power to nought.

Notice the careful construction of these stanzas: the first two about wealthy Babylon’s shame of being stripped bare, the second two about the loss of husband and children which leads to destitution for a woman in the ancient world, and the third two about the powerlessness of experts in predicting the future through astronomy and research. Note the double repetition of the phrase “You said…I am…” which is to claim equality with the God of Israel whose name is “I am”—Babylon may claim to control history but is a complete failure at that.  Isaiah is ringing the changes on his theme of God’s power being able to turn super-powers to nothing in order to bring justice and dignity to the oppressed.

John 5: 2-18                            What’s John about?
We continue to read from John’s gospel on Sundays.
Jesus heals someone who is too weak to take advantage of healing by entering a magic pool. Even though it is the Sabbath, Jesus heals, and tells the healed man to celebrate his health by carrying his mat, both of which are a breaking of the Sabbath. The healed man betrays Jesus to the religious authorities and their opposition to him grows. Perhaps the early Christians were so filled with joy at God’s victory in the resurrection that everything else—even the weekly celebrations of God’s completion of creation on the Sabbath—seemed secondary.

When we are conscious of God’s victory over all evil, new priorities and new decisive actions emerge for us. However, there will be opposition from those in power who make money from the poor, and even some who have been superficially healed, to whose advantage it is that nothing change.

This week’s collect:

Almighty God,
by grace alone you call us
and accept us in your service.
Strengthen us by your Spirit,
and make us worthy of your call;
through Jesus Christ our Lord,
who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever. Amen.

one God, now and for ever. Amen.

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Saturday January 25          Epiphany 2

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Psalm 30
Because of its references to being in the grave, followed by joy, this psalm is often used on Saturdays, the weekly mini-anniversary of Jesus’ being in the grave.

“God’s wrath endures but the twinkling of an eye”—it’s not that God is losing God’s temper, but that God made the world so that actions have predictable consequences—anything else would produce chaos. It’s inevitable that evil selfish actions on our part have consequences but the psalm proclaims that God’s goodness acts to overcome the evils that we have caused. Christians interpret Jesus’ dying and rising as the process by which God accomplishes fulfilment and joy for us despite our evil.

Psalm 32
When I acknowledged my sin, I received immense joy. When we acknowledge our participation in oppressive policies, we know God will overcome those, and we can also be in joy instead of living in denial or guilt. Then we will have the energy to act against those oppressions.

Isaiah 46: 1-13                            What’s Isaiah about?
Isaiah uses an extraordinary set of images: the powerless idols of Babylon whose technology so impressed the Israelites weigh down the weary animals that have to carry them, and the true God acts like an animal carrying the weary Israelites  from their birth to old age. This God laughs at the idols—only this God can change the future and see what will happen, and direct King Cyrus like a falconer controls a falcon to rescue the people. It was a stroke of genius to re-interpret history in this way.

Mark 5: 1-20                            What’s Mark about?
Jesus calms another kind of storm—this time inside someone who has been overcome with evil. Notice that the demons are called “Legion”—it is no coincidence that that is the name of the military force oppressing the country—the Roman empire is being experienced as a herd of demons driving the people crazy. Notice that the Jews who are raising pigs— which are disgusting in Judaism—want Jesus to leave so they can continue with their disgusting business—many Jews were cooperating with Roman oppression. Today our society’s priorities are often driven by the gods of profit regardless of how damaging the outcomes are.
Like Jesus, we also may be asked to leave if we challenge our society’s selfish priorities, but the good news is that God’s justice will prevail regardless as it did with this man who Jesus made same. Trust in that enables us to be active disciples.

This week’s collect:

Almighty God,
your Son our Saviour Jesus Christ
is the light of the world.
May your people,
illumined by your word and sacraments,
shine with the radiance of his glory,
that he may be known, worshipped, and obeyed
to the ends of the earth;
who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever. Amen.

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Friday January 24          Epiphany 2

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Psalm 31
I am being attacked from all sides but trust that God will rescue me. In Luke’s gospel, Jesus quotes from this psalm as he is dying. Appropriate for Friday as the weekly mini-anniversary of the crucifixion.

Isaiah 45: 18-25                            What’s Isaiah about?
God created the world, triumphing over chaos and in the same way will end the chaos of the nations attacking Israel. Only God could know this would happen—the idols of the nations attacking know nothing and are worse than useless. Only the God of righteousness can bring justice and that justice will be unstoppable. Can we cultivate such an expectation for our day?

In this passage we also hear another of Isaiah’s themes, that God’s power in creating the universe is now being experienced as God’s power to bring justice and restoration to those who are being crushed. Here and throughout the Hebrew Bible “righteousness” meant bringing fairness and respect and dignity to the downtrodden. I didn’t mean someone who kept all the religious expectations as it now means. In Isaiah’s time the downtrodden were the entire country in exile.

Mark 4: 35-41                            What’s Mark about?
Like many miracles, the significance of this miracle of the calming of a storm lies in its meaning. To people of Jesus’ time the waves swamping the boat would have meant the return of the original chaos in Genesis 1 which the Spirit had overcome at the beginning of creation, and the storm would have been understood as the Roman empire threatening to drown Judaism, which of course happened a couple of decades later when Rome destroyed the temple. Jesus calming the storm would have meant that God was re-enacting the original wholeness and goodness of creation against the worst the world can do.
We can apply this miracle to the storms inside us or in the wider world as being ultimately under God’s control. In tomorrow’s reading, Jesus calms the storm inside a person overwhelmed by evil. Good news indeed—God’s kingdom really is emerging!

This week’s collect:

Almighty God,
your Son our Saviour Jesus Christ
is the light of the world.
May your people,
illumined by your word and sacraments,
shine with the radiance of his glory,
that he may be known, worshipped, and obeyed
to the ends of the earth;
who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever. Amen.

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