EPIPHANY • 7

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, 13 february

Mark 1:9-15

Becoming Sons and Daughters of God Through Jesus

  • READ

    1:9 In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan.

    1:10 And just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him.

    1:11 And a voice came from heaven, "You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased."

    1:12 And the Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness.

    1:13 He was in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him.

    1:14 Now after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God,

    1:15 and saying, "The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news."

    Commentary

    From a psychological perspective, Jesus’ baptismal vision has all the signs (in Anton Boisen’s classic terminology) of an “upheaval” and “reorganization” of a person’s “inner world,” a psychological event that realigns the individual into profound attunement with that which is highest and best in his or her universe of meaning and value. In Mark’s account, Jesus alone experiences the heavens torn asunder and the Spirit descending, and he alone hears the extraordinary life-changing words, “You are my beloved Son” (NRSV alternate).

    Psychologically we might suppose that this dramatic, formative event may have culminated a passionate spiritual search or “quest for identity” of some sort—though the text gives no hint of it, and Mark would certainly have rejected such a speculation. But whatever it was that moved Jesus to respond to John’s call to repent and be baptized, when he emerged from the waters of the Jordan, he had a vision in which he acquired a unique sense of God-given identity and affirmation, followed by an overwhelming sense of the power of God driving him into the wilderness for an extended period of spiritual struggle. He emerged from this in due course a new man, by all appearances, with supernatural powers and a revolutionary spiritual message.

    Mark describes these events in religious, even archetypal terms: Spirit descending, heavens opening, a voice from heaven, temptations from Satan, wild beasts threatening, and angels ministering. However we interpret such imagery historically, it seems profoundly significant and appropriate psychologically to the depth and power of such an experience. For only the numinosity of religious symbolism can evoke the intensity and extent of a renewal and redefinition of the self or “soul” and point evocatively beyond psychology itself to its transcending theological significance.

    And as in so many other transformative religious experiences, “Spirit” is shown here to be at once gentle and dovelike, yet acting with awesome, disruptive effect—descending without warning from a heaven “torn apart,” reorienting one’s self and world, and setting one on a new and revolutionary spiritual path. In time, such a recipient of “Spirit,” such a religious revolutionary, is bound to confront the world with his or her own special vision and claim—the urgency of the inbreaking reign of God for Jesus in Mark’s Gospel—and to encounter the world’s resistance and rejection. Such is the transforming power of Spirit in the Bible. When Spirit comes, one is changed and, in Mark’s theology, set on the road of discipleship to a cross and beyond.

    What Jesus heard from God in his disruptive, life-changing experience at the Jordan, and what he struggled to affirm in the wilderness, was a message of sublime wonder: “You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased.” He heard an affirmation of his unique being and significance from God, that is, from beyond finite, historical existence. It was a word transcending human origins, rooted in eternity, absolute, and unconditioned by the frailty, uncertainty, and contingency of human relationships or historical circumstance. He learned that he was unconditionally God’s Beloved Son.

    But is it not precisely this message that we ourselves are privileged to hear and to learn in the gospel of Jesus Christ? Granting theological primacy and uniqueness to Jesus as God’s Beloved Son, must we not also claim, in response to him and through him, that in our own unique and different ways we too are sons and daughters of God? Must we not also recognize that through him we too have been given a name, an identity, and a worth and dignity as human beings that is rooted and grounded with all the saints in the eternal, unconditioned, unalterable being and love of God? If we can hear this voice, which transcends all earthly voices, anchoring our existence, identity, and worth eternally in God, can we not also hear the challenge to believe it, to live it, and to declare its truth for every woman and man who is, was, or ever shall be?

    Especially during the season of Lent, shall we not also then be prepared to bear the cost of our divine name and mission as Jesus’ disciples, in the confident hope of our ultimate divine affirmation in the resurrection power and love of God? “For all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God” (says the apostle Paul). “When we cry ‘Abba! Father!’ it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ—if, in fact, we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him” (Rom. 8:14, 15c–17).

    Is this not also the meaning of the imagery of the heavens being “torn apart” in Jesus’ visionary baptismal experience (v. 10)? This powerful verb Mark uses only here and at the moment of Jesus’ death (15:38), when the temple’s curtain is torn in two—marking the radical overcoming of the veil between heaven and earth in the being and work of the Christ. For in this “Beloved Son,” crucified and risen, are we not all declared to be God’s beloved children, and thereby called and empowered to live and serve in the newness of life that is ours in him?

  • 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, 14 february

genesis 9:8-17

The Church as God’s Embodied Promise

  • READ

    9:8 Then God said to Noah and to his sons with him,

    9:9 "As for me, I am establishing my covenant with you and your descendants after you,

    9:10 and with every living creature that is with you, the birds, the domestic animals, and every animal of the earth with you, as many as came out of the ark.

    9:11 I establish my covenant with you, that never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of a flood, and never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth."

    9:12 God said, "This is the sign of the covenant that I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you, for all future generations:

    9:13 I have set my bow in the clouds, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth.

    9:14 When I bring clouds over the earth and the bow is seen in the clouds,

    9:15 I will remember my covenant that is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh; and the waters shall never again become a flood to destroy all flesh.

    9:16 When the bow is in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth."

    9:17 God said to Noah, "This is the sign of the covenant that I have established between me and all flesh that is on the earth."

    Commentary

    One day a young mother was taking a walk with her small son and they saw a rainbow. The four-year-old boy looked up in wonder and said, “Mommy, can we take that home and put it in our house?” His awestruck question prompted the mother to write a poem she titled “A Rainbow in My House.” She took her son’s question literally, imagining what it would be like to have a rainbow in their house, on their walls, emanating from the windows and doors, coming out the chimney. The house was transformed, and it could not contain the glory of the rainbow and its colors.

    What does the body of Christ look like in the light of the rainbow? What would it mean for a Christian community to put God’s “rainbow in their house”?

    God’s bow in the heavens is the sign of the first covenant that God makes with humankind and with all creation. It is a sign that God is a changed (and changing) God. God’s grief over the resistance of the human heart to God’s ways first results in destructive anger, in a worldwide flood. God seeks to wipe out creation and start over with the righteous remnant that could be found in Noah, his family, and the animals in the ark. Now that the flood has subsided God discovers that retribution has not resolved the issue. God’s heart is still grieving, still broken over humankind’s hard-heartedness. Punishment has not coerced humankind into changing its ways. If God wants to stay in relationship with creation and with humankind—the creatures made in the image of God—then God must change. God repents, turns from vindication to forgiveness, patience, and steadfast love for creation and for humanity, despite the knowledge that the human heart may (will?) never change. The creatures made in God’s image may always resist God. Yet God lays down God’s weapons against creation, against humankind. God puts the undrawn bow in the clouds as a personal reminder “never again” to destroy creation with a flood. In the light of that bow, the rainbow, humanity can see God as “One Who Remembers,” even the midst of chaos, even in the midst of rebellion by creation and its creatures.

    The story of God’s rainbow covenant was recorded by the people of Israel in the midst of exile from their homeland, in the midst of chaos for their community. Chaos is, of course, not an ancient phenomenon. Corporately, we know chaos in our twenty-first-century world through terrorism and war, through ecological and natural disasters, and through the gross inequity of the distribution of resources and wealth among the world’s many peoples. Individually, chaos comes into our lives through relationships broken by death, estrangement, and divorce, through illness of body or mind, through addictions of all kinds. Much of this chaos we bring on ourselves, through our resistance to God’s ways. To see and know God as the “One Who Remembers” us, corporately and individually, with love and forgiveness in the midst of life’s chaos with all its pain and suffering, is to discover redemption. Hearing this story on the first Sunday of Lent we begin our walk with Jesus toward Jerusalem, understanding in a deeper, fuller way the God who sent him and whom he served.

    The rainbow bending over Noah’s ark with its doors wide open and spilling out pairs of animals into a new world is an image painted or hung on the walls of many a church nursery. We offer this story as a central message of God’s love and hope to our children, starting at the earliest ages. It is telling that we want them to know that, even in the midst of the worst chaos, God will never forget them. But why relegate this message to the nursery in the church basement? Why not let the rainbow colors emanate from the nursery up the stairwells and into worship and committee meetings, into youth group, adult education and mission projects, into choir rehearsal and church potlucks?

    In the light of God’s rainbow promise, the church can become a place where conflict is taken seriously and respectfully and not “swept under the rug.” Methods of nonviolent conflict resolution and restorative justice can be explored for the health of the congregation, as well as in reaching out to a world of conflict and violence. The church can become a community that seeks transparency in its corporate and individual relationships and clarity in its internal and external communication. The church can respond to God’s call to be a place where “all the colors of the rainbow” were welcome and equal in God’s sight, in terms of race, age, gender, and sexual orientation. The church can seek constructive dialogue with communities of other faiths or communities on the other side of denominational or doctrinal divides. Previously unimaginable partnerships may be formed, and reconciliation may blossom. The patience and forgiveness spilling forth from hearts broken open by God’s love may paint the walls of the church, color its people, and emanate from its doors and windows into the world. We simply need to ask the question with wonder like that of the child: “Can we take that rainbow home and put it in our house?”

  • 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, 15 february

1 peter 3:18-22

Suffering from God’s Perspective

READ

3:18 For Christ also suffered for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, in order to bring you to God. He was put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit,

3:19 in which also he went and made a proclamation to the spirits in prison

3:20 who in former times did not obey, when God waited patiently in the days of Noah, during the building of the ark, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were saved through water.

3:21 And baptism, which this prefigured, now saves you--not as a removal of dirt from the body, but as an appeal to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ,

3:22 who has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God, with angels, authorities, and powers made subject to him.

Commentary

During Lent, my Catholic elementary school classmates earnestly discussed what they were going to “give up.” As they debated the relative merits of denying themselves candy or soda, I tried to figure out what the point was. Why would you stop eating candy if you really liked it? One junior theologian explained that “Jesus died for our sins, so we aren’t supposed to happy. We’re supposed to suffer.”

The epistle reading for the first Sunday of Lent begins with a word about suffering. Before we get to verse 18, the writer entreats the community to be good and do good, even to those who persecute them, for by this example, they might avoid suffering. “Now who will harm you if you are eager to do what is good?” (v. 13). Then, as if recognizing the foolishness of these words, he adds, “But even if you do suffer for doing what is right, you are blessed … For it is better to suffer for doing good, if suffering should be God’s will, than to suffer for doing evil” (vv. 14a; 17).

These days, suffering has become a dirty word, a sign of failure, and our deepest fear. Ask people if they are afraid of dying, and many will say they are not afraid of dying; they just do not want to suffer. Americans have an especially strong aversion to suffering, as if our constitutional right to the pursuit of happiness also guaranteed a life free from suffering. Yet such thinking is sheer folly. No life is free from suffering. What really matters is how we make theological sense of it.

One approach is to make suffering a spiritual discipline, something to be not simply endured, but embraced. There is more than a hint of this in verse 18: “For Christ also suffered for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, in order to bring you to God.” This sort of thinking has caused pastors to counsel women to remain with abusive husbands and fanatics to engage in self-mutilation as a way of being Christlike. As a pastor, I find this rationale for suffering offensive, for Christ suffered not to bring more suffering upon us, but to save us from suffering eternally.

Similarly unsatisfying is the too common view that all human suffering is the will of God. If God causes suffering, which is often unpredictable and undeserved, then God becomes an arbitrary and capricious Lord who does not appear to love us. Can you put your trust in such a God? Furthermore, if God ordains some to suffer, then, by some perverse logic, we have little motivation to intervene. Is this why Christians have done so little to address the suffering of people in other parts of the world?

What we need is a more robust understanding of suffering. Our text reminds us that our Lord suffered terribly before he died on the cross. Yet his suffering was not caused by God; rather, it was the result of Christ’s faithfulness to his mission of reconciling us to God. By suffering and dying, Jesus not only defeated death, but defeated suffering as well.

Hispanic theologians like Roberto Goizueta describe the work of Jesus Christ as “accompaniment.” Through his life, suffering, death, and resurrection, Jesus has become the one who walks with us. There is no experience—tragedy or triumph, joy or sorrow—that is unknown to Christ. Even when we suffer, whether by accident or design, Jesus is with us. To quote Paul, nothing is “able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus” (Rom. 8:39b).

Moreover, if Jesus through his suffering accompanies those who suffer, then we who are followers of Christ should feel compelled to respond, even if our only course of action is to bear witness.

Dr. Abraham Verghese recently wrote in the New York Times Magazine of his experience as part of a medical team that cared for victims of Hurricane Katrina. Over the years, Verghese had learned to steel himself against the sight of human suffering, so that he could do his job. Then one night he treated an elderly gentleman whose home had been destroyed by Katrina. For two days, the man had perched on a narrow ledge without food or water. When a boat finally picked him up, he was dropped off on a bridge packed with other refugees. Verghese was deeply moved by the man’s story and said the only words he could think of: “I’m sorry, so sorry.” The man stood up, shook his hand, and said, “Thank you, Doc. I needed to hear that.” Afterward, Verghese thought about the way he had always tried to steel himself against human suffering and realized this did not help anyone. “The willingness to be wounded may be all we have to offer.”

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, 16 FEBRUARY

Psalm 25:1-10

Encountering God in the Wilderness

  • REAd

    25:1 To you, O LORD, I lift up my soul.

    25:2 O my God, in you I trust; do not let me be put to shame; do not let my enemies exult over me.

    25:3 Do not let those who wait for you be put to shame; let them be ashamed who are wantonly treacherous.

    25:4 Make me to know your ways, O LORD; teach me your paths.

    25:5 Lead me in your truth, and teach me, for you are the God of my salvation; for you I wait all day long.

    25:6 Be mindful of your mercy, O LORD, and of your steadfast love, for they have been from of old.

    25:7 Do not remember the sins of my youth or my transgressions; according to your steadfast love remember me, for your goodness' sake, O LORD!

    25:8 Good and upright is the LORD; therefore he instructs sinners in the way.

    25:9 He leads the humble in what is right, and teaches the humble his way.

    25:10 All the paths of the LORD are steadfast love and faithfulness, for those who keep his covenant and his decrees.

    Commentary

    Psalm 25 underlines that the season is a sustained process in relationship with God. The struggle against enemies (v. 2) is bound up with hearing and appropriating the teaching of the Lord over time (vv. 4f., 8–10).

    The language of the psalm recalls the time that Israel spent in the wilderness after their liberation from bondage in Egypt. The psalmist begs God for leadership in the paths of righteousness (vv. 4, 9), recalling not only the stories of YHWH’s leading by pillars of cloud and fire (Exod. 13:21), but also the whole formation of Israel as a people. They were given identity as a gracious gift in the granting of Torah at Sinai (Exod. 19:16–20:21) and were taught the paths of righteousness over forty years before they were able to enter the promised land. We may presume that this did not escape the notice of those who assigned this psalm for the first Sunday in a wilderness season.

    A number of features of wilderness time are suggested in Psalm 25. They are the reality of enemies (v. 2) and treachery (v. 3), the wilderness as a time and place of instruction in the counsels of the Lord (vv. 4f., 8), where we become mindful of our need for forgiveness (v. 6f.) and are humbled before the steadfast love of God (v. 9f.).

    Whether we choose to enter the wilderness or are in some sense driven there, we will surely encounter enemies. Our enemies can be found outside us and within us, but for most of us, most of the time, the real danger lies within. Even someone we perceive as an enemy—someone with whom we are at war and who is trying to kill us, someone at work who is trying to force us out, someone at school who is cheating and getting ahead of us, or someone with whom we are entangled in legal conflict—can tempt us to forget who we are as beloved creatures of God. When we forget who we are, we become subject to all kinds of thoughts and behaviors that make us less than we were created to be: vengeful, mean, scared, depressed, murderous, or otherwise inclined to self-destructive or addictive behaviors.

    These enemies are within us, and we pray with the psalmist that they not “exult over me” (v. 2). As we choose forty days in the wilderness, we will forgo many of the things that keep our attention outside ourselves and will look for resources within. When we make such a choice, we soon will be reminded of the reality and power of the demons that beset us. Treachery is contrasted in this psalm with waiting for the Lord (v. 3). It is one of the ways in which we will seek to crawl or climb past others, out of fear for our own livelihood. When we are treacherous we make enemies, not peace. Enemies are what we renounced at baptism, among all those things that draw us away from God’s love and grace.

    In the wilderness we will learn or learn again the paths of the Lord. This teaching in the way of true knowledge is granted us in part because we ask for it, waiting for and longing for God (v. 4f.). Knowledge is granted us in part because God is “upright” and “therefore … instructs sinners in the way” (v. 8). This instruction follows a common pattern of liturgy in many churches. After placing ourselves in relation with God through prayer, we listen to one or more readings from Scripture. What follows the readings amounts to our response. We hear the word interpreted for our community and respond, perhaps reciting the Nicene Creed and offering various forms of intercession and petition. In the act of praying we realize again the absurdity of our importuning the Lord of the universe to ask anything for ourselves or others, and so we humble ourselves to confess our sins.

    As we seek consciously to enter the presence of God, or to choose the wilderness, we will soon find ourselves pleading for forgiveness along with the psalmist (v. 6f.). In some communities, where Lent is understood as a season in which we live particularly mindful of our own struggles of faith and our own need for God, worship will begin with a call to confession. Either way, we are led to an attitude of humility, sometimes expressed through the act of kneeling. In communities that invite kneeling, it is common then to stand following a declaration of forgiveness or absolution, as we recall both our past experience of grace and our eschatological hope that we will be raised up into the nearer presence of God. Frequently what follows will be a passing of the peace, itself a prayer that others may also know the presence of God in the community and in their own lives. This serves as a reminder that we are already participants in the new humanity and the reign of God.

  • 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?

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