Saturday in Lent 4

I obviously fell down on my Lenten discipline yesterday also. Such is life. I'm back.

After a long time the king of Egypt died. The Israelites groaned under their slavery, and cried out. Out of the slavery their cry for help rose up to God. God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. God looked upon the Israelites, and God took notice of them. (Exodus 2:23-25)

This evening I looked at these verses with the experience of slaves in the United States in mind. Those who had been kidnapped in their own land, hauled across the Atlantic Ocean, and treated as property in stead of people. They and their descendants. They heard these Bible stories and took them to heart in a way their pale overlords did not and could not.

They heard the plight of the Israelites in Egypt and knew what that was like. They heard of a God who listened to the groanings of slaves and took heart. They heard in these verses a gospel the oppressor knew not. God cared about them--the uprooted and abandoned, the captured and the beaten, the chained and the despised, the mistreated and oppressed.

God took notice of them.

What powerful words. Hope to the oppressed. And serious judgment upon the oppressor. A slave owner, upon hearing or reading these words, should have trembled with mortal fear.

We who benefit from the oppression of others should read them with fear and trembling. And seek to mend our ways and the systems by which some live in comfort and plenty because others live in torment and want.

‘I believe; help my unbelief!’ (Mark 9:24b)

We all take comfort in these words of the desperate parent of a desperate child. This father was at his wit's end as he came pleading to Jesus, hoping for a cure, an end to his son's torment. Jesus asked if he believed.

[Excursus: It should be noted that there is great variety in the healing miracles of Jesus. Sometimes people came to him for help, or cried out for help, or were brought by friends. Sometimes Jesus noticed people or took the initiative, before there was any prompting. Sometimes faith is mentioned and sometimes not. We should not try to fit the variety of ways Jesus healed into one mold.]

The frantic father answered Jesus in an honest expression of how we believe--a faith that holds back, a commitment that wavers.

More good news: Jesus does not condemn the man for this kind of faith. And he acts. The boy is healed. The father's honest faith, faith mingled with unbelief, is rewarded.

If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast,* but do not have love, I gain nothing.

Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

Love never ends. But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end. For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part; but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways. For now we see in a mirror, dimly,* but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love. (1 Corinthians 13:1-13)

Anything I say will mar this. Let it stand on its own.

Yesterday's collect:
O God, you have given us the Good News of your abounding love in your Son Jesus Christ: So fill our hearts with thankfulness that we may rejoice to proclaim the good tidings we have received; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.


Today's:
Mercifully hear our prayers, O Lord, and spare all those who confess their sins to you; that those whose consciences are accused by sin may by your merciful pardon be absolved; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

--the BB