PRACTICE & PRAY
Heal and Deliver: The Fifth Sunday of Epiphanytide
Blessed Epiphany, friends!
We’re in the fifth week of walking with Jesus in Epiphanytide’s celebration of revelation and witness!1
Today’s letter includes:
A few thoughts from last week in the church calendar
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Practices and prayers, art and music for this week in the church year
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Let's begin.
Last week’s reflection
I began my lectionary reflection last Sunday, the fourth Sunday in Epiphany, with two rhetorical questions:
Has it ever been more important that the Church discerns the difference between prophets who have been given God’s authority and prophets who have presumed God’s authority for themselves?
What’s at stake when we don’t discern rightly?
Last week’s lectionary passages wove together profound rubrics from Moses and Paul for discerning and holding accountable all those who name the authority of God (including our own selves.) One of the reminders that have lingered with me most this week is the non-anxious invitation in Deuteronomy, “Don’t be frightened by it.”
Once again, Brian’s sermon helped me press into the questions provoked by Mark’s Gospel.
Brian cautioned us that when we talk about the glory of God, we often sentimentalize it, but the glory of God is not to be trifled with. He quoted Fleming Rutledge in a book she recently wrote about Epiphany, “The glory of God in the Old Testament punches Moses and Isaiah in the stomach.” The season of Epiphany is also known as the Feast of Theophany, or the glory of God manifested, revealed tangibly, and made visible to human beings (think the burning bush that revealed God to Moses). And the power of God, as made visible in Jesus, the ultimate theophany, is given with authority to accomplish God’s purposes. And Paul reminds us of what Jesus revealed as the ultimate theophany, which is that we know the glory of God by the force of love compelling the authority.
The spirit that descended on Jesus and is the power in which he speaks and performs this exorcism in the Gospel of Mark is the same spirit you and I have as followers of Jesus. A lot of times, we read about power in the New Testament, and we minimize the power of the Holy Spirit in our lives as somehow a weaker power than Jesus had. That is not true.
Is it weakened? Is the power of the Holy Spirit weakened in us by our choices and the false names and calls we follow? Yes, but it’s the same power.
—Brian Murphy, sermon for Epiphany 4
You should listen to the whole sermon. Especially if you care about discerning the difference between those who presume and proclaim they have God’s authority and those who are truly acting and living in God’s authority. (the sermon begins at the 24-minute mark)
Practices and prayers, art and music for this week in the church year
This week, we are framing our prayer and practice around today’s lectionary passages: 2 Kings 4:8-21, 32-37; Psalm 142; 1 Corinthians 9:16-23; Mark 1:29-392
Community Prayer
