Tuesday • 3/15/2022
Tuesday of 2 Lent, Year Two
This morning’s Scriptures are; Psalm 61; Psalm 62; Genesis 42:1–17; 1 Corinthians 5:1–8; Mark 3:19b–35b
This morning’s Canticles are: following the OT reading, Canticle 13 (“A Song of Praise,” BCP, p. 90); following the Epistle reading, Canticle 18 (“A Song to the Lamb,” Revelation 4:11; 5:9–10, 13, BCP, p. 93)
Mark: Binding “the strong man.” “But no one can enter a strong man's house and plunder his goods, unless he first binds the strong man. Then indeed he may plunder his house.” (Mark 3:27 ESV). Jesus begins to “bind the strong man” when he defeats the tempter in the wilderness (Matthew 4; Luke 4). Every miracle thereafter exposes the loosening of Satan’s grip on people’s lives and on the creation that Jesus has come to redeem. On the cross, Jesus completely breaks Satan’s dominance: Satan’s power to condemn us, his ability to cause us to live under the fear of death, and his capacity to keep us in the thrall of sin’s compulsion.
As our epistle and Old Testament readings show, however, living in the reality of the “binding of the strong man” is no easy task!
1 Corinthians: Rationalizing misbehavior. “It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and of a kind that is not found even among pagans; for a man is living with his father’s wife” (1 Corinthians 5:1). Some Christians in Corinth thought that permitting a parishioner sexual access to his mother (or step-mother) was consistent with Christian faith, that it was, in fact, enlightened and progressively expressive of Kingdom-come: “And you are proud! (1 Corinthians 5:2, NET).” To do so, however, for Paul, is to go “beyond what is written” and to violate “God’s commands” (1 Corinthians 4:6b; 7:19b) about a “man lying with his father’s wife” (Leviticus 18:8; Deuteronomy 22:30; 27:20). Furthermore, it’s to transgress commonly held moral objections about sex between parents and their offspring (e.g., the Oedipus story). Everybody.knows.it.is.wrong!
Held back from life’s true liberation by their lust and by their spiritual pride, Christians in Corinth are unknowingly still in the grip of the “strong man.” There’s a strong cautionary note here for those of us who think we are so alive to “new creation” and so confident of the leading of the Holy Spirit that we can be enticed into rationalizing misbehavior.
Genesis: Patiently untangling the knot of sin. Growing up, the main thing I learned fishing with my brother Randy was the need for patience in untangling knots. Randy would be pulling in fish after fish. I’d be watching my bobber bob unproductively, or I’d be untangling the fishing line. If you try to untangle fishing line knots in a hurry, I discovered, you’re going to wind up with a tighter and tighter ball of mess!
Sin compounds throughout the book of Genesis, as though to prove Paul’s point in Romans: “the free gift following many trespasses brings justification” (Romans 5:16b). Rather than intervening immediately after Adam and Eve’s eating of the forbidden fruit and Cain’s murder of Abel, God allows the permutations of sin to grow and grow — interrupting with the Flood and the dispersion at the Tower of Babel. Then, even after he begins to work his redemptive plan through the special couple Abraham and Sarah, it becomes clearer and clearer how complicated sin is: the lack of faith in not waiting for God to fulfill his promise of a son to Abraham and Sarah, the contest between Jacob and Esau, Laban’s envy of Jacob, Jacob’s favoritism toward Joseph, Joseph’s snarkiness towards his brothers, his brothers’ envious selling of their brother and deception of their father. It’s all a huge mess.
In today’s passage in Genesis, during a famine, ten of Joseph’s brothers come to Egypt to purchase grain. While Joseph recognizes them, they do not recognize him. As they bow before him, Joseph remembers his earlier dreams in which they do precisely that — and he holds his peace (compare Genesis 37:6–9 with 42:6–9). What we have here is the beginning of God’s slow untangling of the knot of sin and estrangement between the children of Jacob, the children who bear the hope of the world.
We know that God is working his redemptive plan through all the circumstances of the Joseph story, and through these most fallen of fallen people. He is also interested in bringing reconciliation into the relationships that sin has broken apart. In Genesis 42, we see the beginning of the process by which God can patiently soften hard hearts. Here he begins to knead the hearts of Joseph’s brothers who have long lived with guilt and have worked hard to shut out its voice.
Lent is a good season for taking stock of the patient way God works in each of his children to untie knots of sinful rebellion and to restore relationships long thought to be lost.
Be blessed this day,
Reggie Kidd+
"Tangled fishing line" by Aristocrats-hat is marked with CC BY 2.0.