Morning Devotion for the Season of Lent

March 18, 2024

Invitatory

The Lord is full of compassion and mercy: O come, let us adore him.

Glory to the Father, and to the Son: and to the Holy Spirit: as it was in the beginning, is now, and will be for ever. Amen.

Reading: Mark 9:30-32

They went on from there and passed through Galilee. He did not want anyone to know it; for he was teaching his disciples, saying to them, ‘The Son of Man is to be betrayed into human hands, and they will kill him, and three days after being killed, he will rise again.’ But they did not understand what he was saying and were afraid to ask him.

Meditation - Winnie Smith

Mark’s Gospel is a swift march towards Jerusalem. The shortest of all Gospels, it wastes no time with frivolity - there is no account of Jesus’s birth or childhood, no sermon on the mount. When read straight-through like a novel, it is jarring. The story moves from event-to-event without time for reactions or reflections. But that is also what captivates listeners and readers. From the outset, we recognize this Gospel as uniquely focused on the crucifixion and on Jesus’s identity as the suffering Messiah. Theologian Martin Kähler described Mark as “a passion story with an extended introduction.”

Many scholars consider Mark 10:45 to be the key to this Gospel: “For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.” Jesus is clear on his mission from the start, but the disciples have difficulty grasping this. He repeatedly tells them to keep his identity secret and keep his remarkable deeds to themselves. Jesus wants people to see his actions and understand who he is rather than have it told to them. The disciples, while following the order to keep quiet, never seem to understand the identity of the one they are following. They understand a Messiah to be a chosen person, special and glorious, unlike anyone else. They cannot grasp the role of Messiah as one who suffers and dies. While we know the whole story - we listen to the recounting of Jesus’s ministry with the knowledge of where he will end up, hanging on the cross, buried in a tomb, and then risen and among his disciples again - they do not. In real time, they can’t understand what it means when he tells them he will suffer and depart. This is not their understanding of a Messiah.

We remember the violence Jesus will face each week in the eucharist. It seems that people want to remember a nice supper shared between friends, but what we are actually recollecting is the death brought about by people who couldn’t tolerate the Messiah - the living God - living among them. Each week, we remember that we - people - rejected, scorned, mocked, and feared Jesus enough to hand him over to a most painful death.

A friend of mine recently preached a sermon in which he told the story of a violent hate crime that ended someone’s life. Later he was chastised by the parent of a young child in the congregation who told him such a violent story should never be told in church. My friend, in a pastoral and reasoned tone, explained that the Christian story hinges on the violence of humanity. That the crucifixion was about as violent as we can get. But the beauty of Christianity is that when we live by it, hope outweighs despair, kindness outweighs violence, and love outweighs hate. That is the beauty of Easter at the end of Holy Week.

Collect for Fridays

Almighty God, whose most dear Son went not up to joy but first he suffered pain, and entered not into glory before he was crucified: Mercifully grant that we, walking in the way of the cross, may find it none other than the way of life and peace; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord. Amen.

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