This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 119:1–24; Isaiah 41:1–16; Ephesians 2:1–10; Mark 1:29–45
This morning’s Canticles are: following the OT reading, Canticle 11 (“The Third Song of Isaiah,” Isaiah 60:1–3,11a,14c,18–19, BCP, p. 87); following the Epistle reading, Canticle 16 (“The Song of Zechariah,” Luke 1:68–79, BCP, p. 92)
Isaiah’s promise of redemption and empowerment. Subject to humiliating domination and exile both from Assyria and Babylon, the people to whom Isaiah ministers have been made to feel like “worms” and “insects” (Isaiah 41:14 NRSV). Sometimes you just have to be brought that low, it seems.
Isaiah wants the children of Israel to know that their story doesn’t end in ignobility,in being squashed like a bug! Right now, they feel like they are the laughingstock of the world. However, through Isaiah, Yahweh wants the world to know—and for his people to find comfort in the fact—that just as he had called Abram from the east to become his “friend” (through whom Yahweh intends to bless the whole world), he now summons “a victor from the east” to rescue God’s elect who are in dire straits and low estate (Isaiah 41:5). Later, Yahweh will name him: Cyrus. “He is my shepherd, and he shall carry out all my purpose” (Isaiah 44:28). Indeed, in 539 B.C. Cyrus of Persia would conquer Babylon and subsequently order Judah’s release from captivity. This act, Isaiah claims, is under the sovereign control of Yahweh.
Yahweh will thereby show himself still to be, as he was in the exodus, “your Redeemer … the Holy One of Israel” (Isaiah 41:14). Back then, the Israelites had witnessed Yahweh dispatch their enemies into the Red Sea. Then he made them into a strong army for the conquest of the Promised Land. So now, in Isaiah’s day, he will once again rescue his people and make them warriors.
The fulfillment of biblical prophecy often takes surprising form. The return to Israel under the Persian ruler Cyrus was, simply, by a decree. The Israelites did not need to take up arms to reclaim their land. While they would need to protect themselves against the threat of military intervention from nearby enemies when they rebuilt Jerusalem and the temple, the returnees never came close to Isaiah’s promise that they would become “a threshing sledge, sharp, new, and having teeth … you shall thresh the mountains and crush them” (Isaiah 41:14). Centuries later, the Maccabees would rise up briefly in successful military revolt against their Seleucid oppressors; but eventually, the Israelites would succumb to Roman conquest.
On this side of the New Testament’s story, Isaiah’s promise of a Redeemer and of the empowerment of his people finds a deeper and greater fulfillment in the life and ministry of Jesus Christ. That’s where today’s gospel and epistle readings come in.
Jesus as Redeemer in Mark. Unlike the other synoptic gospels (Matthew and Luke), Mark’s Gospel is not loaded with extensive teaching material. Instead, he focuses on demonstrations of Jesus’s power. A fever breaks at his presence. Demons depart (and their knowledge of his true divine identity obliquely points to the “behind the scenes” contest underway—though we know that the contest is not in doubt). Leprous skin becomes clean at his touch. As C. S. Lewis will finally phrase it in his Chronicles of Narnia: Aslan the Lion Redeemer is in the land, and the endless winter of sin and death is “working backwards.” Amen!
Jesus empowers the replacing of one “walk” with another, in Ephesians. The apostle Paul writes from the perspective of Jesus’s finished work on the cross, where the Lord accomplished “redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses” (Ephesians 1:7). Now, God gives, as Isaiah promised, strength to his people, power to his saints, noble status to those who once were “worms” and “insects.”
To Paul, we were kind of like spiritual zombies—like walking dead, subject to a domination of ourselves by desires beyond our control. We were “dead through the trespasses and sins in which [we] once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience. Among these we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, following the desires of body and mind, and so we were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind” (Ephesians 2:1–3 RSV). As walking dead, we couldn’t make our own selves alive. We couldn’t make our own selves into non-zombies.
Then Paul follows with one of the Bible’s great “But God…” clauses. “But God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ…” (Ephesians 2:4–5). God counters our spiritual dead zombie-ness, our powerlessness, and our being worthy of wrath and rejection, by showering us with two great gifts: the riches of his mercy and the depths of his great love. On the cross, God kills our sin. Demonstrated by the empty tomb, he annuls our walking death. He raises us up from the dead, right along with his own Beloved Son, “seats us in the heavenly places,” and empowers us to live again! He gives us the grace to believe in Christ; the grace to accept the amazing gift of forgiveness in Christ; and the strength and vision to work out what it is to be “created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them” (Ephesians 2:8–10 RSV). We are the “walking dead” no longer. The perspective is breathtaking. The words are worth unhurried and repeated contemplation.
As Paul prayed in chapter 1, just before he wrote this stunning paragraph, so I pray for each of us, “that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened, so that you will know what is the hope of His calling, what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints [including … insert your name!], and what is the surpassing greatness of His power toward us who believe” (Ephesians 1:18–19 NASB).
Be blessed this day,
Reggie Kidd+