Category: TODAY’S READING

Sunday February 23          Epiphany 7

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Psalm 118
An enthusiastic song of thanksgiving for everything God has done for us—God has protected us from evil forces, and we give praise in the temple and in processions. Appropriate for a Sunday as an anniversary of the triumph of Easter Day.

Portions of the second half of this psalm are traditionally sung on Easter Day.

Psalm 123
We keep our eyes trained on God’s direction to us, like servants alert to their owner’s slightest hand signal. We are oppressed by the wealthy and we anticipate God’s signal at any moment that God will act.

Isaiah 66: 7-14                           What’s Isaiah about?
A series of lovely images of Jerusalem as a mother nursing her people as infants, an image that God extends to God’s relationship with the people. This concludes our reading from the final section of Isaiah.

Tomorrow we start a new book, Ruth.

John 10.7-16                            What’s John about?
Jesus is a gate and a shepherd through whom humanity has safety. He emphasizes the whole of humanity, not just Judaism, are included. Do we find ourselves becoming open gates for outsiders to experience the new life through death and resurrection?

This week’s collect:

Almighty God,
your Son revealed in signs and miracles
the wonder of your saving love.
Renew your people with your heavenly grace,
and in all our weakness
sustain us by your mighty power;
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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Saturday February 22          Epiphany 6

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Psalm 107 Part 2
When the Israelites completed their journey through the wilderness God brought disaster on the evil people who lived there (as the Israelites understood them) to make a fertile place for God’s own people. When God’s people were oppressed, God rescued them. Wise people, the poem says, will take this to heart and will trust in God’s care and justice to prevail.

One of our tasks today is to cultivate that trust in God’s care for humanity so that when disaster happens in our world we will have something solid to offer.

Psalm 108
I will praise God because God is so powerful and I ask you, God, to act on behalf of the poor. God replies by listing all ways in which land will be given to God’s people and taken from those who are evil. I respond by asking God to act to save us because it seems God has abandoned us.

These two psalms are often scheduled for Saturdays while Christ is still in the grave and we wait for the resurrection.

Isaiah 66: 1-6                           What’s Isaiah about?
When God restores the city of Jerusalem, the people are to trust in God’s power, not in the empty repetition of religious ritual which is an abomination. God will mock their sacrifices unless they trust in God to rescue them. Religion is not a substitute for God. This would have been a shocking stance at a time when sacrifices were the most holy thing a person could do.

Mark 12: 35-44                            What’s Mark about?
It is now Jesus’ turn to challenge the leaders. He uses what to us is an obscure riddle — he asks who is the “Lord” referred to in Psalm 110? It was supposed that King David wrote the psalms and at one point “Lord” seems to refer to an ancestor of the ancient King David, but a moment later “Lord” refers to the messiah who is expected to arrive in Jesus’ near future—a thousand years after David. There appears to be a contradiction in scripture. Jesus is making an obscure grammatical argument to reject the official belief, based on this psalm, that the messiah will be born in Bethlehem. Why would Jesus argue against the messiah being born in Bethlehem? He may be deliberately undermining the arguments of the religious leaders who have abandoned loyalty to the messiah (the “Lord” of the psalm) for loyalty to the wealth and power of Rome. Their lives are in contradiction just as the psalm is. Whatever the original point was, the people experience their oppressive leaders being bested by Jesus in this argument.
Jesus then goes on to criticize the religious leaders who make themselves rich at the expense of the very poor—Jesus draws attention to a very poor woman who puts a tiny offering into the temple collection and Jesus says it is worth more than what all the rich people gave because it was everything she owned. Valuing a penniless woman above the wealthy male leaders was an unimaginable insult. Jesus is clear that cultivating generosity and dying to greed is the way into God’s kingdom, not the life-style of the wealthy oppressors. No wonder he will be executed in a couple of days.

This concludes our readings from Mark’s gospel. In preparation for Lent we will read the “Sermon on the Mount” from Matthew, and during Lent we read from John. On Sundays in Lent we will continue to read from Mark’s gospel.

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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Friday February 21          Epiphany 6

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Psalm 102
A lament at the destruction of Jerusalem 600 years before Jesus. It ends with hope of God’s faithfulness. The imagery of desolation is appropriate for Fridays, the mini-anniversary of Jesus being betrayed, abandoned, and in hours will be dead. Yet God will remain faithful.

Isaiah 65: 17-25                           What’s Isaiah about?
Isaiah encourages the people to anticipate their rescue from Babylon by presenting a glorious vision of the new Jerusalem God will create—it will have prosperity and perfect peace, even the animals will be at peace—God’s glory will infuse every aspect of human and natural life.

Mark 12: 28-34                            What’s Mark about?
A religious leader poses a common but difficult question about which of the six hundred-odd Old Testament rules is the most important. He agrees with Jesus that being just, which is to love God completely, and to value others as much as oneself, is more important than purely religious observances. Jesus affirms that this is what God is about. Here is someone who is not a disciple who has grasped the qualities of the kingdom. As the account continues, it is now Jesus’ turn to ask awkward questions as the conflict between him and the religious leaders escalates.

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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Thursday February 20          Epiphany 6

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Psalm 105 Part 1
Praise to God for caring for and protecting the people—God looked after them before they were enslaved in Egypt, and prepared them for rescue from famine by arranging for Joseph to become the Pharaoh’s senior officer. God is committed through a covenant to do this forever. The second half of the poem will continue the story with God’s rescue of them from Egypt, God’s care for them in the wilderness, and God’s gift of a home.

Psalm 100
A short hymn of praise that God has remained faithful forever.

Isaiah 65: 1-12                           What’s Isaiah about?
Even though the people were faithless, God constantly waited for them to return. Even though God ought to have repaid them for their evil, and there were consequences for their evil, God ensured they were not destroyed.

Mark 12: 13-27                            What’s Mark about?
The challenges to Jesus grow more intense. He is challenged to make a public commitment either to pay tribute to Rome or not. Whichever he chooses, the leaders can arrest him. He can be arrested for blasphemy if he chooses the emperor (because the emperor claims to be god), or for treason against the emperor if he refuses. Jesus points to the picture of the emperor on the coins, and to the inscription which identifies the emperor as God, and he replies that we must all give God what is due to God, and give to the emperor what is due to the emperor. But what he means is that nobody owes anything to the emperor because the emperor owns nothing—God is in charge of the world, not the Roman emperor! This is not just a clever trick on Jesus’ part—he is challenging all our assumptions about who runs the world and to whom we give our loyalty.
The next challenge to Jesus is to ridicule the idea of resurrection with the suggestion that if resurrection is true, a widow of many husbands would have to commit adultery in heaven when they all came back to life! Jesus responds that God is interested in people who are alive now and not interested in clever arguments. While amusing to us, these were attacks which, if successful, could carry the death penalty. The more Jesus insists on loyalty to the God of justice and inclusion, the more those in power are determined to attack and silence him forever.

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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Wednesday February 19          Epiphany 6

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Psalm 101
I am determined to live a life of justice and not to support exploitation.

Psalm 109
A desperate plea for God’s assistance, and rejoicing that God is faithful to the poor. The middle section, which uses violent images against those who oppress the powerless, expresses a profound desire that oppression be removed from the world. At the conclusion the writer rejoices that God is committed to the needy and to protecting those who are unjustly accused.

Isaiah 63: 15-64:1                            What’s Isaiah about?
Isaiah urges the people to expect their immanent rescue—they are to lament their faithlessness—even Abraham and Jacob wouldn’t recognize them—and implore God to save them.

Mark 11: 27-12: 12                            What’s Mark about?
On Sunday Jesus had mocked the Roman army, on Monday he had disrupted the religious extortion of money used to pay for the occupation, so today he is confronted. He claims John the Baptist as his mentor, which puts the authorities in a quandary—if they agree with John the Baptist, the Romans may execute them the way they executed John for starting a rebellion, and if they disagree, the people will hold them in contempt as collaborators with the Romans. Jesus is forcing them to choose between their collaboration and the new kingdom of God, a choice he has made in his actions the last two days. They demur. They do not choose the kingdom of justice. Jesus then tells a story illustrating how the religious leaders are being unfaithful to God’s vineyard—a common symbol of the people of God. Their determination to kill Jesus becomes clear. Within a couple of days he will be dead.

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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Tuesday February 18          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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Monday February 17          Epiphany 6

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Psalm 89 Part 1
God’s faithfulness in creation is the basis for our trust in God’s justice and care for us. Just as God created order from chaos in creation, so we can rely upon God to create order out of the chaos in human society. God’s original goodness, intended for humanity and the world, is that everyone have a place and dignity and worth. Accomplishing that is the work of justice, often translated into traditional English as “righteousness.”

Isaiah 63: 1-6                           What’s Isaiah about?
Isaiah uses a series of violent images to convey God’s irresistible power and absolute determination that injustice and oppression be eliminated from the earth and that God will protect the people. This sense of God’s absolute power to overcome oppression was of great encouragement to the Jews living in slavery in Babylon and questioning whether they would ever escape.

Mark 11: 1-11                            What’s Mark about?
The disciples are about to see clearly what Jesus is all about. Every year a week before the celebration of the ancient Passover escape from Egypt, a Roman general entered Jerusalem riding on a magnificent stallion at the head of an entire legion, and welcomed by Herod. The purpose was to crush any revolt inspired by the ancient stories of God rescuing the people from Egyptian slavery—but this time, many hoped, from Rome.
At the same time as the Roman general enters the city, Jesus also enters Jerusalem but on a donkey, enacting the true kingdom by riding an unimportant animal which puts him on the same level as the people. Jesus’ defiance is exactly what the Romans have come to suppress, and it is no wonder that he is executed only days later.

The early Christians interpreted these events as meaning that Jesus defied not only the Roman oppression of their country, but all cruelty, oppression, and evil. By embracing evil and passing through death into resurrection he took evil on, and won. The disciples are about to see how, by participating in Christ’s death and resurrection, they will receive full life.

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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Sunday February 16          Epiphany 6

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Psalm 66
God, everyone praises you because you have rescued us from disaster so I will delight in praising you.

Psalm 67
Because of God’s blessings to all the nations we will all sing God’s praises.

Isaiah 62: 6-12                           What’s Isaiah about?
The reason Cyrus, the Persian emperor, is allowing the Jews to return to Jerusalem is that he wants them to grow food so that Cyrus’ armies will have provisions when they march through Jewish territory. But God swears that the food the people grow will be eaten by them instead of by invading armies. The people will return to Jerusalem not afraid of what comes next, but in joy because God has declared to the whole world that they are rescued.

John 8: 12-19                            What’s John about?
Jesus says he is light for the whole world—self-offering love is the only life-style which can show us how to live in dark and self-centred times. His critics challenge him to prove this—they demand he show them others who support this radical claim. Jesus responds that God supports the claim, and if they don’t see that it’s because they don’t know God. If they had known the character of God they’d know how true his claim is.
The fact that Jesus’ self-offering love isn’t taken seriously in our time either, doesn’t prove it isn’t true—we know in our deepest awareness that it’s the only way for us, and for the world, to live fully.

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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Saturday February 15          Epiphany 5

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Psalm 87
A vision of Jerusalem as the source of life for all the world, as if every nation and every beautiful thing originated there. Christians might interpret this as Jesus’ death and resurrection in Jerusalem being the source of life and beauty for the whole world.

Psalm 90
Our lives are very short, like a breath we are gone, we are so insignificant. Bless us, God.

Isaiah 61: 10-62: 2                            What’s Isaiah about?
Jerusalem is portrayed as God’s bride, an image that conveys extraordinary commitment on God’s part and which would challenge people to a whole new understanding of how God understands God’s relationship with humanity. It would be as shocking, and as challenging, as if we were to suggest that God is marrying Canada.

Mark 10.46-52                            What’s Mark about?
Mark has recounted three stories of the disciples’ rejection of Jesus’ call to give themselves away in love. In Jericho, the city that was first to come under the rule of the God of justice when Joshua crossed the Jordan in ancient times, Jesus now heals a blind man, but this time the man sees accurately. Mark’s imagery is that up to now the disciples have not fully seen what Jesus, or discipleship, involves, but their blindness is about to be completely cured.
The blind man “followed Jesus on the way” is a pun: “The Way” is what Christianity was originally called and immediately after being cured he follows Jesus on “the way” to Jerusalem, where five days from now Jesus will be executed. Jesus’ disciples will finally see that dying to a life of injustice and exploitation is the only way to be fully alive and for the kingdom to arrive among us. Jesus’ own death and resurrection will become the template for the entire world.

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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Friday February 14          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”.

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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