Morning Devotion for the Season of Lent
April 4, 2022
Invitatory
Rend your hearts and not your garments. Return to the Lord your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and repents of evil.
Glory be to the Father, and to the Son: and to the Holy Ghost;
As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be: world without end. Amen.
The Lord is full of compassion and mercy: Come let us adore him.
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 – Peter Vanderveen
I received notice a few days ago that my tax returns were finished. My accountant sent me an email that arrived just after midnight. I wasn’t surprised to get her message at such a late hour. But I also wasn’t eager to open it.
I have the same reaction every year. This message comes. I’m glad its on time. And I’m immediately inclined to leave it unread in my inbox until I feel there’s a more favorable time to discover my actual tax liabilities. Maybe the oddness of the last sentence struck you as well: is there ever a favorable time to find out whether more taxes are due? If there is, it hasn’t yet come to me.
Nevertheless, eventually I’ll decide to click on the email – usually on a whim – and I’ll quickly scroll down through a lot of inscrutable prefatory comments to locate what’s required on the bottom line. Someone else does the work for me. My accountant knows far better than I what needs to be submitted and in what form. I don’t even pretend to understand how everything is organized and calculated. I simply do what’s directed. And this, I think, is the real source of my reluctance to open the email I receive: I have no idea what I’ll be told – whether it’s to my benefit or not. So I wait a bit before clicking on the documents.
There’s something of the same kind of reluctance evident in the behavior of Jesus’ disciples in the reading from Mark appointed for today. A lot is said in two verses. Jesus is intent on steering clear of the crowds that gather around him; and what’s implied is that he wants to instruct the disciples about who he really is – and the crowds have different hopes. In essence, they want a superhero, someone who will miraculously bring everything into order. This, after all, is what we presume distinguishes God from all the rest of us. God has the power to do this. But Jesus declares that he has a different mission. His role, he says, is to be the one through whom the full extent of our disorder will be clearly shown. He has come in order to be killed – by us, out of the sheer pique of our disappointment that he won’t live into our expectations of who we want God to be. He states this plainly.
But the disciples don’t want to hear this, and they’re reluctant to ask Jesus anything about this – because they had their own ideas too, and their fear was that Jesus would disappoint them as well. So they followed along after him, but they didn’t want to pay close attention to what Jesus was actually saying and doing. It was best not to look and not to ask.
Not a lot has changed since then. We share the same reluctance here too. We often prefer the god we want to the God who reveals himself to us. It’s easier to dream dreams than it is to be shown who we truly are. But love can only flourish when we all see one another fully, face to face. No matter the cost. For on the other end of our reluctance is the potential for enormous joy. Jesus intimates this too.
The Lord's Prayer
Our Father, who art in heaven,
hallowed be thy Name,
thy kingdom come,
thy will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our trespasses,
as we forgive those
who trespass against us.
And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil.
For thine is the kingdom,
and the power, and the glory,
for ever and ever. Amen.
