Friday • 1/29/2021
Week of 3 Epiphany

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 40; Psalm 54; Isaiah 50:1–11; Galatians 3:15–22; Mark 6:47–56

This morning’s Canticles are: following the OT reading, Canticle 10 (“The Second Song of Isaiah,” Isaiah 55:6–11; BCP, p. 86); following the Epistle reading, Canticle 18 (“A Song to the Lamb,” Revelation 4:11; 5:9–10, 13, BCP, p. 93)

Isaiah. Laced throughout Isaiah 40–55 are four “Servant Songs” (42:1–4; 49:1–6; 50:4–9; 52:13–53:12). As God’s servant, the nation Israel increasingly takes on the role of vicarious sufferer for the sins of the world. This suffering has received brief and anticipatory mention in the first two songs (Isaiah 42:4; 49:7). Today’s passage expands the theme, as Isaiah, with “the tongue of a teacher,” finds redemptive purpose in all that Israel has endured in facing the consequences of her own rebellion against Yahweh: “I gave my back to those who struck me, and my cheeks to those who pulled out the beard; I did not hide my face from insult and spitting” (Isaiah 50:6). Further, Isaiah hints here in Isaiah 50 at something that will become explicit in his fourth Servant Song (Isaiah 53): it is one particular Israelite, ultimately, who will be preeminent in suffering. 

The Lord God has opened my ear,
    and I was not rebellious,
    I did not turn backward. …

The Lord God helps me;
therefore I have not been disgraced;
therefore I have set my face like flint,
and I know that I shall not be put to shame;
he who vindicates me is near (Isaiah 50:5,7–8)

Galatians. The glory of Paul’s writing is that he “gets it”! He gets it that God’s design was for a representative Israelite to suffer sin’s curse on behalf of all. He gets it that in Calvary’s shameful cross, a magnificent plan—a plan whose rough contours had been elegantly laid out in Scripture ahead of time—had come together. 

In today’s passage in Galatians, Paul argues that God’s promises to Abraham always had one single offspring in mind (Paul’s point of departure is that the original text of Genesis 12:7 is “seed” in the singular). Israel’s blessing of the nations was to come through one particular descendant of Abraham. Paul also argues that the giving of the Mosaic law was never intended to nullify the promise made to Abraham. So, God never intended to set aside a relationship based on faith with one based on works. 

Paul “gets it” that Christ’s incarnation is an embodiment of God’s faithfulness to his promises. Christ’s obedience is a demonstration of his own trust in his Father, and of his faithfulness to the divine mission given him by the Scriptures and the counsels of heaven. Paul “gets it” that the response that such faithfulness evokes from us can only be an answering faith. And thus, Paul concludes today’s passage with the stunning declaration (again, I prefer the New English Translation): “But the scripture imprisoned everything under sin so that the promise could be given—because of the faithfulness of Jesus Christ—to those who believe” (Galatians 3:22). 

Mark. “And they were utterly astounded, for they did not understand about the loaves, but their hearts were hardened” — Mark 6:51b–52. Jesus’s disciples, says Mark, couldn’t understand Jesus’s power over the wind and the waves because they hadn’t understood the miracle of the loaves and the fishes earlier that day. What the feeding of the 5,000 from such a tiny supply foreshadows is the provision of forgiveness and life for the world from the self-giving of the one—Jesus Christ, “who gives his life as a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45). Jesus’s disciples can’t understand that Jesus is Lord of Creation until they understand that he is Lord of Redemption. 

That’s a lesson for us as well.  Before we look to Christ, the Lord of Creation, to fix our circumstances, our health, or our world, we do well to give him, as Lord of Redemption, thanks for releasing us by his ransoming death and victorious resurrection, from the captivity of sin, from the despair of death, and from the emptiness of life without God. 

I pray all our lives today are full of wonder at Christ’s presence in everything we undertake; at the genuine sense of the Spirit’s leading in every moment; and at the utter faithfulness of our Heavenly Father for everything we need. 

Be blessed this day, 

Reggie Kidd+ 

Image: Adapted from
Ivan Aivazovsky, Jesus Walking on Water 1890