Wednesday, 2/3/2021
Week of 4 Epiphany

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 72; Isaiah 54:1–10(11–17); Galatians 4:21–31; Mark 8:11–26

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)

Mark. It’s almost comical that after recent events having to do with scarcity of food, Jesus’s traveling retinue discovers aboard their boat that, well, somebody forgot to bring bread. Jesus seizes upon the opportunity to press his disciples to consider what he’s been trying to teach them about that very subject: bread. God, he would have them understand, will bring salvation to Israel (twelve baskets of overflow at the feeding of the 5,000) and the nations (seven baskets of overflow at the feeding of the 4,000), not by the way of the Pharisees (the reformist party of the people) nor by the way of the Herodians (the accommodationist party of the aristocracy). “Do you not yet understand?” (Mark 8:21): Personal piety and moral reform won’t save. Nor will political machinations. The point of the rest of Mark’s gospel is this: God will bring salvation to Israel and the nations through the Son of Man who will give his life “as a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45). 

Today’s passage is the hinge on which Mark’s Gospel pivots to this theme. Mark’s is the only gospel to tell the remarkable story of the blind man who, at Jesus’s first touch gains just enough sight to see blurred “men like trees walking,” and who thus needs a second touch from Jesus for his blindness to be completely cured, and for him to “see everything clearly” (Mark 8:25). 

The account is a brilliant setup to Peter’s confession (in tomorrow’s reading) that Jesus is indeed the Christ (Peter “sees” the truth, but only with blurred vision—Mark 8:29). Peter’s confession requires Jesus’s further explanation that the mission of the Son of Man (i.e., the Christ) is to suffer, be rejected, die, and rise again (Peter and the other disciples must “see” this truth in order to “see everything clearly”—Mark 8:31–33). Twice more in chapters nine and ten, Jesus will have to outline his messianic mission (Mark 9:30-32; 10:32–34). He will round out the entire section with the healing of Blind Bartimaeus (Mark 10:46–52), a miracle that does not have to be repeated, coming as it does on the far side of the full explanation that, “For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45). 

There is good reason for the BCP’s prayer: “Mercifully grant that we, walking in the way of the cross, may find it none other than the way of life and peace” (BCP, p. 99, 220, 272, 420). Life and peace come by means of the cross, not by self-fixes, and not by system-fixes. 

Galatians. Paul rejects the self-fix of circumcision and the law (Galatians 3–4). Neither cutting one’s flesh nor trying really hard to be good gives a person genuine power over the flesh. That power lies only in the cross of Christ and in the gift of the Spirit that comes with the cross (see Galatians 5–6). 

Isaiah urges jubilant song at the prospect of political liberation from slavery in Babylon (Isaiah 54). But in the long view, for Isaiah, real liberation awaits the saving death of the Suffering Servant of Isaiah 53. Paul expands on Isaiah’s meaning by showing that what counts, therefore, is not being circumcised into “the Jerusalem below” but being baptized into “the Jerusalem above” (compare Isaiah 52:1 with Galatians 3:26–29; 4:26). Isaiah’s ultimate promise is that “though mountains may fall,” the Lord’s love is so steadfast that genuine redemption will come. Jesus wants his disciples to see in his ministry the dawning of that long-anticipated day. The day will be fully upon us when Christ returns and his church’s “Maker is [her] husband.” The “covenant of peace” will be finalized when the Jerusalem that is now above comes to a renewed earth (Isaiah 54:5,10; Revelation 21-22). 

In the meantime, the Lord Jesus offers the way of his cross as the way of life and peace—a way that is beyond self- and system-fixes. For just as he gave bread to the multitudes, and just as he gave his body on the cross, so even now he gives himself in the Eucharistic feast, Bread from Heaven—that you and I may truly find our life in him, and readily extend our arms in love and peace to those who do not yet know him. 

Be blessed this day,

Reggie Kidd+

Image: Adaptation - "Christ Restoring Sight to the Blind" by Lawrence OP is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0