Thursday • 1/14/2021
Week of 1 Epiphany

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 18:1–20; Isaiah 41:17–29; Ephesians 2:11–22; Mark 2:1–12

This morning’s Canticles are: following the OT reading, Canticle 8 (“The Song of Moses,” Exodus 15, BCP, p. 85); following the Epistle reading, Canticle 19 (“The Song of the Redeemed,” Revelation 15:3–4, BCP, p. 94)

“… the Son of Man has authority on earth…” — Mark 2:10. 

Four desperate people break through the roof of the place where Jesus is staying, to bring a paralytic friend in hopes that Jesus can heal him. Jesus proclaims forgiveness of the man’s sins. Immediately, the theological sheriffs in the room object that Jesus has claimed power for himself that belongs to God alone. Jesus responds obliquely: “Which is easier, to say to the paralytic, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Stand up and take your mat and walk’? But so that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins (he said to the paralytic) I say to you, stand up, take your mat and go to your home” (Mark 2:9–11). The man rises on legs that have been restored to health.

For the first time in Mark’s Gospel, Jesus uses the term that will be his favorite self-designation, “Son of Man.” It is an introduction to Jesus’s identity—an identity that he will gradually disclose over the course of Mark. The phrase comes from the book of Daniel, where that prophet refers to a divine and heavenly figure, “one like a son of man” who is destined to assume all dominion on earth (Daniel 7:9-17; 9:20-27), and who will “put an end to sin, … atone for iniquity, [and] … bring in everlasting righteousness” (Daniel 9:20-27). 

In Mark’s Gospel, Jesus artfully employs the “Son of Man” terminology as he progressively paints his lionesque self-portrait. The main elements are threefold. Working from the back of Mark’s Gospel to the front: 

First, at his ascension, Christ as Son of Man will “come” into the presence of the Ancient of Days and be seated at his right hand to receive dominion over heaven and earth. At his trial, in answer to his accusers as to whether he is the Christ, he says, “I am; and ‘you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of the Power,’ and ‘coming with the clouds of heaven’” (Mark 14:62; and also 13:26). As ascended Lord, Jesus the Son of Man will reign with everlasting righteousness (Daniel 9:27). 

Second, this coming into his dominion follows the Son of Man’s “great suffering”: his betrayal, arrest, contemptuous treatment, dying, and rising again (Mark 8:31; 9:12,31; 10:33). Thereby, Jesus as Son of Man will, in Daniel’s language, “put an end to sin” and “atone for iniquity” (Daniel 9:24). 

Third, even before his death, resurrection, and ascension, the lordly Son of Man shows he has “authority on earth” to forgive sins. Here in his earthly ministry, the Son of Man who has come “to serve and not to be served” (Mark 10:45) manifests God’s magnificent love for humans by bringing life and healing and forgiveness down here to where we live. 

It is this third aspect of his Son-of-Man-ness that Jesus says is on display in his healing ministry. Behind all sickness stands sin: its power to attack, enfeeble, and ultimately hand us over to death. That is by no means to say that every sickness is the result of any particular sin we have committed (though we can do irresponsible things that make us more susceptible—but that’s not the point). The frailty of sickness comes upon us all regardless—and it does so by virtue of the fallen condition that has overtaken the whole race since Genesis 3. The heavenly and divine “one like a son of man” has come to the earth to bring back the health and the soundness of being that were lost in the Garden.

“For he is our peace…” — Ephesians 2:14. 

Another sign of the power of sin in the world is the way the human race is fractured -- splintered into a near infinity of tribes, ethnicities, races, and classes. We are dead, and Christ makes us alive—so says Paul in the first half of Ephesians 2. But we are also divided, and Christ makes us one—so continues Paul in the second half of Ephesians 2. 

Of the many fault lines within the human race, none is more important to a Jewish person like Paul than that between Jews and Gentiles. Paul celebrates the fact that Christ has broken down the barriers between Jews and Gentiles, has brought the two together in his own body on the cross, and has made them together a single offering to God (Ephesians 2:11-19). We need no longer be strangers and aliens to one another because, in Christ, we share one nationality, one family membership, one sense of what it is to be a people. It’s one of the most breathtaking thoughts in all of Scripture.  

In this time of pandemic and disunity, I pray that we know that above it all reigns the Son of Man. I pray that he grants us assurance of the forgiveness of our sins, and gives us his peace regarding his care for our physical health as well as our spiritual well-being. I pray that he grants us the grace to be on his side in the breaking down of barriers between people and people groups, and that we have a firm sense of our own place in the “the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone.” I pray we each may know how intentionally and wonderfully we are being built into our own special place in his church: the Lord’s “holy temple” and God’s “dwelling place” (Ephesians 2:19–22). 

Be blessed this day, 

Reggie Kidd+