EPIPHANY • 5

IMPORTANT NOTE FOR THE NEXT 3 WEEKS

Dear CNLers, the faithful unnamed writers of our weekly lectionary guide are going through a revamp for the next 3 weeks. In these 3 weeks from 30th January to 18th Feburary, our writers will be taking a break with the aim of coming back stronger for the Lent season in 2024.

For these 3 weeks, we will be providing a substitute resource from “Feasting the Word, Year B, Volume 1”, a great resource on lectionary readings. Titles for each readings has been added by me and I hope it helps you better engage with the scriptures.

There are also no reflection questions but 2 simple questions you can consider after each reading is,

What is 1 thing that stood out to you in the scripture/commentary?

What significance might that 1 thing be for your coming week?

It is our prayer that you as a CNLer and we as a church “Be Better” and “Grow Stronger” in 2024.

reading for: Tuesday Night, 30 JANUARY

mARK 1:29-39

The Significance of Touch and Community for New Life

  • READ

    1:29 As soon as they left the synagogue, they entered the house of Simon and Andrew, with James and John.

    1:30 Now Simon's mother-in-law was in bed with a fever, and they told him about her at once.

    1:31 He came and took her by the hand and lifted her up. Then the fever left her, and she began to serve them.

    1:32 That evening, at sundown, they brought to him all who were sick or possessed with demons.

    1:33 And the whole city was gathered around the door.

    1:34 And he cured many who were sick with various diseases, and cast out many demons; and he would not permit the demons to speak, because they knew him.

    1:35 In the morning, while it was still very dark, he got up and went out to a deserted place, and there he prayed.

    1:36 And Simon and his companions hunted for him.

    1:37 When they found him, they said to him, "Everyone is searching for you."

    1:38 He answered, "Let us go on to the neighboring towns, so that I may proclaim the message there also; for that is what I came out to do."

    1:39 And he went throughout Galilee, proclaiming the message in their synagogues and casting out demons.

    Commentary

    Note the sequence of Jesus’ healing miracles in Mark’s Gospel. The first miracle takes place in the synagogue, where Jesus is teaching. Remember, this is at the very beginning of Jesus’ public ministry. In Mark’s account, it is Jesus’ first exorcism. When a man, possessed by “an unclean spirit,” rudely interrupts, Jesus casts the demon from the man. The crowd exclaims, “What is this? A new teaching—with authority! He commands even the unclean spirits, and they obey him” (Mark 1:27). Mark writes, “Immediately he left the synagogue and entered the house of Simon” (1:29, my translation), whose mother-in-law lay sick with a fever. “He came and took her by the hand and lifted her up. Then the fever left her.” Jesus’ “teaching” ministries and “healing” ministries are a part of the same ministry. Within the same week that he called the disciples to follow him, announcing that the “kingdom of God is at hand” and launching his public ministry, Jesus had already established the pattern for his future ministry. There was no discrepancy between what he preached and what he practiced. In fact, those who study the ancient languages draw a close parallel between “healing” and “salvation.” The last verse of our passage makes clear the connection between preaching and healing: “And he went throughout Galilee, proclaiming the message in their synagogues and casting out demons” (1:39).

    Jesus, like the author of Job before him, rejected the tendency to consider sickness as God’s punishment for sin. On the contrary, Jesus’ understanding seems compatible with our contemporary understanding of illness as un-wholeness, and of healing as the bringing about of wholeness. After all, what is the function of medicine, of psychotherapy, or of religion, for that matter, if it is not to restore intended wholeness? When Jesus said to the woman who pushed her way through the crowd, simply to touch the hem of his garment,

    “Daughter, your faith has made you well [“whole”]” (5:34), it was to reclaim the health in her that had been “broken” or somehow “lost.”

    One cannot dismiss as insignificant the number of times the Scriptures refer to touching. In the text, Jesus came and took Peter’s mother-in-law by the hand and lifted her up and the fever left her. Throughout both testaments—the angel who touches the hollow of Jacob’s thigh; Jairus’s daughter; the blind man whom Jesus “touched,” and so forth—there is one incident after another pointing to the power of touch. It might even be said that in Scripture touch is a metaphor for intimacy, for presence, for relationship. Some theologians even suggest that to be “created in the image of God” means that we are created for relationship, for “it is not right that human beings should be alone” (cf. Gen. 2:18). Similarly, scientists and psychologists have conducted tests on primates, as well as on infant children, that were deprived at an early age of human touch, with the results showing devastating effects on developmental skills and sociability. One recent experiment was designed to test the efficacy of prayer on patients suffering from comparable illnesses. The members of one group, located on the east coast, were each assigned the name of an ill person on the west coast with whom they were not acquainted and instructed to pray every day for the person’s health. The members of the other group were each given the name of an ill person whom they knew personally and who was a member of their own church. Similar instructions were given, to pray for the ill people every day. The patients who had no intimate relationship with their prayer partner showed no significant difference in improvement from the general public, whereas members of the group who had developed a social relationship with their prayer partners indicated a decided difference in improvement and quality of life.

    Gerald May, a medical doctor who practices psychotherapy in Washington, DC, writes of the importance of community in the healing process:

    God’s grace through community involves something far greater than other people’s support and perspective. The power of grace is nowhere as brilliant nor as mystical as in communities of faith. Its power includes not just love that comes from people and through people but love that pours forth among people, as if through the very spaces between one person and next. Just to be in such an atmosphere is to be bathed in healing power.

    Jesus “came and took her by the hand and lifted her up. Then the fever left her.” The power of touch, of intimacy, of nearness, to make whole: Jesus must have understood that which we are too often too slow to comprehend. Love not expressed, love not felt, is difficult to trust. Theologically speaking, that is the reason for incarnation. God knew the human need for nearness. Jesus is the incarnation of God’s love, which makes it all the more demanding (if frightening) to realize that for some people, we are the only Jesus they will ever meet.

    Another physician, Richard Selzer, has written of the miracle of touch:

    I stand by the bed where a young woman lies, her face post-operative, her mouth twisted—palsy, clownish. A tiny twig of the facial nerve, the one to the muscles of her mouth, has been severed … to remove the tumor in her cheek, I had cut the little nerve. The young husband is in the room. He stands on the opposite side of the bed, and together they seem to dwell in the evening lamplight, isolated from me, private.… “Will my mouth always be like this?” she asks. “Yes,” I say, “it will. It is because the nerve was cut.” She nods and is silent. But the young man smiles. “I like it,” he says. “It is kind of cute.” He bends to kiss her crooked mouth, and I am so close that I can see how he twists his own lips to accommodate her, to show her that their kiss still works.… I hold my breath and let the wonder in.

  • REFLECT

What is 1 thing that stood out to you in the scripture/commentary?

What significance might that 1 thing be for your coming week?

reading for: Wednesday Night, 31 JANUARY

Isaiah 40:21-31

Knowing and Understanding God as His Children

  • READ

    40:21 Have you not known? Have you not heard? Has it not been told you from the beginning? Have you not understood from the foundations of the earth?

    40:22 It is he who sits above the circle of the earth, and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers; who stretches out the heavens like a curtain, and spreads them like a tent to live in;

    40:23 who brings princes to naught, and makes the rulers of the earth as nothing.

    40:24 Scarcely are they planted, scarcely sown, scarcely has their stem taken root in the earth, when he blows upon them, and they wither, and the tempest carries them off like stubble.

    40:25 To whom then will you compare me, or who is my equal? says the Holy One.

    40:26 Lift up your eyes on high and see: Who created these? He who brings out their host and numbers them, calling them all by name; because he is great in strength, mighty in power, not one is missing.

    40:27 Why do you say, O Jacob, and speak, O Israel, "My way is hidden from the LORD, and my right is disregarded by my God"?

    40:28 Have you not known? Have you not heard? The LORD is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary; his understanding is unsearchable.

    40:29 He gives power to the faint, and strengthens the powerless.

    40:30 Even youths will faint and be weary, and the young will fall exhausted;

    40:31 but those who wait for the LORD shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.

    Commentary

    Even Annie Dillard is at a loss for words. The writer who composed Holy the Firm and Pilgrim at Tinker Creek—works that portray faith with piercing eloquence—settles on abstractions to describe the phenomenon of a solar eclipse. “The meaning of the sight overwhelmed its fascination. It obliterated meaning itself,” Dillard writes in her essay “Total Eclipse.” Comparing herself to a fellow observer who described the vision as a “Life Saver up in the sky,” Dillard writes, “I myself had at that time no access to such a word. He could write a sentence, and I could not.” Though cosmic events may be explained scientifically, their full beauty and meaning are often unavailable, indescribable.

    It is to such heavenly sights that Isaiah calls our attention as proof of God’s almighty and benevolent power. “Have you not known? Have you not heard? Has it not been told you from the beginning? Have you not understood …? It is [God] who sits above the circle of the earth … who stretches out the heavens like a curtain, and spreads them like a tent to live in” (vv. 21–22). It is none other than the “Creator of the ends of the earth” who “does not faint or grow weary” (v. 28). This mighty God also cares for the people and will “renew their strength” so that “they shall mount up with wings like eagles” (v. 31).

    Isaiah makes it sound so obvious and good: The God who creates all of this, who is greater even than rulers, can certainly take care of the smallest among us! Nice sermon, so far: Awesome creation, powerful God, throw your cares away. But what about those modern hearers of this word who don’t think they understand much of anything about the universe or divine omnipotence (“Have you not understood?” can sound like a reproachful Sunday school teacher, after all)? Or those parishioners who are skeptical about God if the current state of the world is any indication of how almighty God actually is, or how much God really cares? Don’t take for granted that appeals to heavenly grandeur work with everyone. Despite knowing that in Second Isaiah the prophet is proclaiming an end to the Babylonian exile, modern hearers of this text may not readily assent with Isaiah’s audience to the idea that God’s beautiful creation explains everything we need to know about God and life.

    The meaning of life is not often revealed atop a mountain on a starry night. I’ve climbed a few, and though they are beautiful and I feel close to God, certain questions about life and faith persist, I must admit. If Annie Dillard cannot fully get around the meaning of a solar eclipse as a sign of God’s power and love, how are we mere mortals to understand what the heavens reveal to us about God? Dillard writes, “One turns at last even from glory itself with a sigh of relief. From the depths of mystery, and even from the heights of splendor, we bounce back and hurry for the latitudes of home.” It is all too much.

    Perhaps that is the point. We are mere “grasshoppers” to the God who “sits above the circle of the earth” (v. 22). We scuttle home, confused. Perhaps our lack of understanding is precisely what Isaiah hopes will overwhelm us into feeling comforted by the God who cares for us despite our limitations. The logic would then be this: God created all of these wondrous things we cannot even begin to fathom fully, but we ought to be thankful that this God, who exists beyond our imagining, still cares for each one, “calling them all by name” (v. 26).

    Human development experts have identified how important receiving recognition is to a healthy psyche—not just recognition for outstanding achievements, though those should be celebrated, but the simple recognition of one’s very existence. Neglected, ignored children often have difficulty as adults making meaningful connections because they did not receive sufficient recognition of their mere personhood as a child. That a grand and wonderful God calls even the smallest forgotten child by name is pretty awesome!

    The question goes like this: If God is good and all-powerful, then why does evil persist? It is a relevant subject for congregations today, as the digital information age shrinks the global community and increases our awareness of suffering both far and near.

    Recognizing the truth of a skeptic’s complaint, rather than discounting it or even trying to resolve it, is a good first step. God’s understanding is “unsearchable,” Isaiah tells us (v. 28); we will never fully understand how God works in the world, why suffering continues and evil reigns in so many places. And God’s understanding is not likely to be revealed to us instantaneously on a mountaintop or during a solar eclipse. Instead, we come to know how God works in the world through years of living with God and God’s people. Years of exploring, seeking, reflecting, and acting with God. Over time, through Bible study, worship, practices of faith like hospitality and forgiveness, stewardship and service, we come to a place of knowing God’s ways, even if we cannot sufficiently put words to it.

  • REFLECT

    What is 1 thing that stood out to you in the scripture/commentary?

    What significance might that 1 thing be for your coming week?

reading for: Thursday Night, 1 FEBRUARY

1 Corinthians 9:16-23

RESOLVING CONFLICTS IN CHRIST

READ

9:16 If I proclaim the gospel, this gives me no ground for boasting, for an obligation is laid on me, and woe to me if I do not proclaim the gospel!

9:17 For if I do this of my own will, I have a reward; but if not of my own will, I am entrusted with a commission.

9:18 What then is my reward? Just this: that in my proclamation I may make the gospel free of charge, so as not to make full use of my rights in the gospel.

9:19 For though I am free with respect to all, I have made myself a slave to all, so that I might win more of them.

9:20 To the Jews I became as a Jew, in order to win Jews. To those under the law I became as one under the law (though I myself am not under the law) so that I might win those under the law.

9:21 To those outside the law I became as one outside the law (though I am not free from God's law but am under Christ's law) so that I might win those outside the law.

9:22 To the weak I became weak, so that I might win the weak. I have become all things to all people, that I might by all means save some.

9:23 I do it all for the sake of the gospel, so that I may share in its blessings.

Commentary

Why does Paul find it necessary to enter into a somewhat complex discussion of his apostleship with his friends in the church in Corinth? The answer is that he is continuing the conversation that he began in chapter 8, without which his subsequent points lose much of their impact and cogency.

When Paul takes up the issue of “idol meat” in chapter 8, he grants the “strong,” that is, those who eat this meat, the validity of their convictions. They are theologically correct. Because there is but one God, the idols are nothing. But immediately he appeals to the strong to be in solidarity with the weak. The brother or sister in Christ is far more important than anyone’s right to anything. Indeed, in something of an outburst, Paul exclaims that if eating meat is the cause of a fellow Christian’s falling, he, Paul, will eat no meat to all eternity.

In chapter 9, Paul first asserts his right as an apostle, a right that includes salary and benefits. Immediately, however, he renounces the use of these rights. He is making an example of himself in terms of what it means to be truly free of all and simultaneously the slave of all. The reason for this, obviously, is the way of Christ’s cross. Paul identifies himself with the weak so thoroughly that he renounces privilege and honor, and like the poor he supports himself by manual labor and refuses to eat meat.

It is important to note that this decision is not the result of applying general principles or rules of behavior. It is about relationships. Freedom in Christ means precisely the radical freedom to identify with “others” in their otherness, Jews and Greeks, the strong and the weak. But it should be noted that the identification with the weak is consistent with the way of the cross and with the gospel’s preferential option for the poor. For Paul, his vocation as an apostle involves the recapitulation of Christ’s own sacrifice in giving his life for the poor and the weak. Nor is this calling and pattern unique to apostles. It is the calling and vocation of all who are baptized into Christ. The church is, therefore, not a community of volunteers, but is itself a part of the gospel, the good news. By living out this pattern of self-giving, the church is an eschatological sign of what God is bringing about for the whole cosmos, the new creation.

What a jolt this must have been to the strong in Corinth who believed that they were right on the issue of idol meat and that they had been given the freedom to do as they pleased! This self-absorption made it unthinkable for the strong to identify with anyone else, most of all, the weak.

For Paul, how the community orders its life and how members relate to each other are part and parcel of the proclamation of God’s reconciliation of the world. The church is a community that God calls into existence to incarnate, live out, and proclaim this new reality. But this requires that in Christ people find the radical freedom to identify fully with others, to become as they are, and thus to experience a genuine transformation of the self. This is what Paul means when he describes his own freedom to be a Jew among Jews, to be a Gentile among Gentiles, to be weak among the weak, in short, to be all things to all people.

It is time to ask again, as we did in comments on chapter 8, whether or not Paul has offered us insights to live more faithfully in situations of conflict. The obvious question to ask is whether Paul’s position simply requires the strong, in any conflict, to surrender to those perceived as the weak. Does Paul’s strategy subject the strong to the inevitable tyranny of the weak? The answer appears to be no. In 10:29–30, Paul speaks for the strong: “For what good does it do for my freedom to be subjected to the judgment of another’s conscience? If I partake with thankfulness, why should I be denounced for that for which I give thanks?” (my translation). If chapter 8 expresses the responsibility of the strong for the weak, this passage insists on the responsibility of the weak for the strong. Paul clearly does not expect everyone to agree. Instead, he asks something of both groups, which he hopes will make it possible for all of them to move forward together. What he asks is that those on each side identify with those on the other side, in order to become as if they were the ones with whom they disagreed. This will not involve a change in conviction, at least not at first, but it means that they are to recognize what it would mean to act in behalf of those to whom they are opposed.

What an intriguing strategy for people in conflict, the more so because it is grounded in Paul’s understanding of what God is doing in the world. What would happen if congregations were to attempt this in the pastoral life of the church? Perhaps it would help to set new terms for the conflict itself. Unimagined possibilities might appear, creating greater flexibility and new diversity in place of the increasing hardening of positions. People might learn new ways to speak and listen to one another, thus changing the character of the conflict. Indeed, such an experience might help American Christians in particular, given our culture of individualism, to rediscover Paul’s point that the gospel envisions freedom as the right of individuals, not to do as they choose, but rather to relinquish their rights for the sake of others. True Christian freedom therefore expresses itself in service.

One final word. In a world as conflicted and violent as ours, if the church were to be a place where Christians learned to identify with their opponents and to experience God’s power to bring about transformation, the church would realize its calling to be a sign of hope and a witness to God’s offer of life to the world.

REFLECT

What is 1 thing that stood out to you in the scripture/commentary?

What significance might that 1 thing be for your coming week?

reading for: FRIDAY Night, 2 FEBRUARY

Psalm 147:1-11, 20C

DELIGHTING IN THE LORD TODAY

  • REAd

    147:1 Praise the LORD! How good it is to sing praises to our God; for he is gracious, and a song of praise is fitting.

    147:2 The LORD builds up Jerusalem; he gathers the outcasts of Israel.

    147:3 He heals the brokenhearted, and binds up their wounds.

    147:4 He determines the number of the stars; he gives to all of them their names.

    147:5 Great is our Lord, and abundant in power; his understanding is beyond measure.

    147:6 The LORD lifts up the downtrodden; he casts the wicked to the ground.

    147:7 Sing to the LORD with thanksgiving; make melody to our God on the lyre.

    147:8 He covers the heavens with clouds, prepares rain for the earth, makes grass grow on the hills.

    147:9 He gives to the animals their food, and to the young ravens when they cry.

    147:10 His delight is not in the strength of the horse, nor his pleasure in the speed of a runner;

    147:11 but the LORD takes pleasure in those who fear him, in those who hope in his steadfast love.

    147:20c Praise the LORD!

     

    Commentary

    Few times are more rewarding than late on a Saturday afternoon. A long day in the yard satisfies us with the accomplishment of taming our patch of nature. It doesn’t matter if it is July or November, whether we mowed grass, pulled errant weeds, or raked leaves. It doesn’t matter if we smelled the scent of a burning pile, got too much sun on the bridge of our noses, or scratched behind the dog’s ears. It doesn’t matter whether we dug holes and planted seeds or harvested a basket of homegrown tomatoes from the earth found on our one-third acre, our patio, or our “back 40” … by whatever measure, it felt good!

    We may have restocked the bird feeder or run the sprinkler and spread compost. Regardless, after putting away the tools and wiping the sweat from our brow, we paused on the back steps or settled into the porch rocker and said, “It is good.” How silly we are! Captivated with our own creativity and control, we frequently become oblivious to our capacity to become agents of God’s grace and peace in this world. Consumed with our own creativity and control, we forget that it was God who after crafting, perused the created order and said, “It is good.” In our own foolishness, we rush to the front of the line to take a turn at playing God.

    What a gracious reminder Psalm 147 gives us! Our Lord, provider of all, doesn’t boast like a proud farmer at the state-fair competition, standing beside his heirloom 712-pound pumpkin, saying, “Pounds talk, everything else walks.” No, the Lord grins with those who receive, revel in, and care for the deep mysteries of the Creator’s created order. The Lord’s pleasure rests with those who see through the competition of a dog-eat-dog world and with singular focus put their hope in the Lord’s steadfast love and enduring peace (vv. 10–11). They sing a song of praise and wait patiently upon the Lord.

    Early in the day that the Lord made the first covenant with Abram, Abram has a vision in which he is instructed to lift up his eyes to the heavens and to count the stars. He is then told that his deepest longing will be fulfilled. The Lord will bind up Abram’s wound of having no offspring and give to him descendants, named descendants, more than the stars in the sky. Abram is given hope and waits in that hope, which is fulfilled in the birth of Isaac through Sarah’s womb and Jacob through Rebekah’s womb.

    Each day, human understanding dresses up in what is measurable. We plan worship with a measurable time, which ultimately limits praise offered through song, prayer, and proclamation of the word. It’s likely that if we were to stand in Abram’s sandals, we’d want a measurable accounting and report of the names of the stars. Our sinful nature is to bundle God’s mysteries into neatly wrapped packages tied tightly with rigid doctrine and time constraints.

    The Creator’s milieu reveals remarkable and indescribable mysteries from small wonders to unfathomable depths. God’s delight is not in the strength of a horse, but in the horse, the creature with all of its creature features. God’s delight is not in the strength of a runner, but in the runner himself or herself, in all of his or her unique human features (vv. 10–11). With this knowledge, the whole of creation sings praise and delights in the Lord.

    As we grow in faith and come before the Lord in acts of worship, how do we take and make the time for delight in the Lord? How do we listen for the work of the Holy Spirit, as creation continues in each day, with newfound attentiveness as newborn raconteurs for the ongoing story of God’s good creation?

    It’s easier to live at the surface, going day to day, moving along, doing what it takes to get by, saying what it takes to get by, and living in the shallow end of things, living out of popular piety. Piety nursed in the intensity of the Lord’s creation begins by not co-opting our lives to the hegemony of inattentive living in the creation; and continues as it is nurtured by the Spirit with growing disciplines of listening and praying through the Bible, reading the confessions, and listening attentively to the world around us.

    When we recognize in our lives together the despair of exile and the hope of God’s restoration, our worship liturgy and our lives together begin to be framed in a manner that makes melody before the Lord for our gratefulness in creation. We participate with the psalmist who knows that the Lord alone builds up and gathers the outcasts (v. 2). With the Holy Spirit, we recognize and remember that every day is a day to live our lives out in service with God in creation. That every day is a day, for us as young ravens, to hope in God’s love and abundant power, not our own (vv. 5–11).

    Instead of hunkering down in self-protective places, we lift our eyes and join our voices together and with confidence confess, “I believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and in Jesus Christ his only Son our Lord.” We labor with our hands for the sake of God’s good creation. We live and worship knowing we are the recipients of God’s statutes and ordinances (v. 19). When we stop and think about how the words we speak and the actions we will perform will affect one another and the Lord’s ongoing creation, we glorify God. When we direct all of our words and deeds in the spirit of God’s peace, faithfulness, and steadfast love … the Lord delights.

    Praise the LORD!

  • REFLECT

    What is 1 thing that stood out to you in the scripture/commentary?

    What significance might that 1 thing be for your coming week?

Season of EpiphanyCNL