Friday • 4/1/2022
Friday of 4 Epiphany, Year Two
This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 102; Exodus 2:1–22; 1 Corinthians 12:27–13:3; Mark 9:2–13
And Saturday’s Exodus 2:23–3:15
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)
Psalm 102: Calling out in distress. This morning’s psalm hits like a ton of bricks: “…[M]y days drift away like smoke, and my bones are hot as burning coals” (Psalm 102:3). I am struck both by how close to home the psalmist’s situation is: our lives are as precarious as his. I am struck also by the fact that the psalmist’s spiritual instinct is to process the pain by writing a song to the Lord. The psalm’s superscription (not in the BCP, but part of the ancient received text, and included in printed editions of the Bible) says it all: “A prayer of one afflicted, when faint and pleading before the Lord.”
Psalm 102 is a masterful study in how to face desperate times.
First, the psalmist cries out to the Lord about how distressing his situation is (vv. 1-11): “I lie awake; I am like a lonely bird on the housetop … I wither away like grass” (vv. 7,11 NRSV).
Second, the psalmist expresses confidence that the Lord will “regard the prayer of the destitute, and will not despise their prayer.” The Lord will heal, and thereby bring glory and praise to himself (vv. 12-22):
18 Let this be recorded for a generation to come,
so that a people yet unborn may praise the Lord:
19 that he looked down from his holy height,
from heaven the Lord looked at the earth,
20 to hear the groans of the prisoners,
to set free those who were doomed to die;
21 so that the name of the Lord may be declared in Zion,
and his praise in Jerusalem,
22 when peoples gather together,
and kingdoms, to worship the Lord.
Third, the psalmist turns again to his own plight, contrasting his own fragility with the Lord’s eternality (vv. 23-28): “[D]o not take me away at the midpoint of my life, you whose years endure throughout all generations” (v. 24 NRSV). But then that last clause prompts an extraordinary turn. In the remaining verses of his song, the psalmist drops an “Easter Egg” of sorts. He celebrates God’s permanence in language that the New Testament will pick up centuries later to describe Jesus Christ, the Eternal Son whom God sends as Apostle and High Priest of his love: “[Y]ou are the same, and your years have no end” (compare Psalm 102:25-27 with Hebrews 1:10-12).
Exodus 2 and 3: Yahweh prepares a redeemer. In Exodus 2 and 3 (today’s and Saturday’s readings), the future deliverer Moses is rescued from a murderous tyrant’s decree of death-by-drowning as an infant. As an adult, Moses is moved at seeing the “forced labor” inflicted on “his people.” After a horribly misguided and tragically failed attempt to avenge the beating of one of his kinfolk, Moses goes into a wilderness exile.
In that exile Moses has a personal encounter with Yahweh. From the burning bush, Yahweh says, “I have observed the misery … I have heard their cry … I know their sufferings … The cry of the Israelites has now come to me.” This tender insight comes in the same passage as the revelation about God’s mysterious name: “I AM WHO I AM.” The Redeemer Lord of the Exodus is touched by our infirmities, but he’s no fuddy-duddy “Big Guy” in the sky. More fundamentally, the Redeemer Lord will graciously bring about his redemption through the rescued wanna-be redeemer Moses. But Moses must learn to do the Lord’s work in the Lord’s way.
Centuries later, infant Jesus also escapes a tyrant’s decree (Matthew 2). Jesus too will be moved by the plight of the oppressed, but instead of inflicting punishment on evildoers, Jesus will undergo a vicarious death-by-drowning at his baptism (Matthew 3). Having readied himself to take the punishment for our sin, Jesus then exiles himself to the wilderness (Matthew 4). There is no burning bush for him, only the voice of the tempter. Nor is there a need to be taught to do the Lord’s work the Lord’s way, for Jesus is the Lord himself. And he assures the Tempter that he has come to do the will of His Father and ours. Moses’s life and ministry foreshadows in remarkable ways that the Lord’s work will indeed be done in the Lord’s way!
All the world’s pain—from the psalmist’s to the Israelites’ to yours and mine, be it pestilence or war, fractured relationships or failing health—all of it has been taken up into the suffering and victory of God’s Eternal Son, our Lord Jesus Christ.
Be blessed. May the knowledge of that hope sustain you this day.
Reggie Kidd+
Image: Adaptation, Pixabay
