For Sunday
Epiphany 4B
Collect
Almighty and everlasting God, you govern all things both in heaven and on earth: Mercifully hear the supplications of your people, and in our time grant us your peace; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.
Amen.
Reading
Reflection
We’re still in the first chapter of Mark. It may seem like this passage should be halfway through, but it isn’t.
We’re in Jesus’s second month after his baptism (with 40 of those days spent in the desert). This is just the beginning.
While the Wedding at Cana described in the gospel of John is famously known as Jesus’s first miracle, I might argued that this one is more exciting. Mostly because it challenges their expectations of Jesus from the start.
We, on the other hand, are used to water-into-wine Jesus. And really, only a few dozen people were in on that one. This one? Totally public. And more importantly, it is the first clue that Jesus isn’t just a rabbi.
As we go through Mark, we will see Jesus keep expanding their minds with more and more divine power. And all of it amazes and scares his followers because it is moving further and further from what they thought it was at the beginning.
And as we come nearer the end of the first month of a year we still think of as “new,” we keep getting clues from Jesus that there is more change in the world than we anticipated. And much more to come.
While this may frighten us, it need not frighten us off. For there are awesome things we are called into. But they just might look a little different. Or feel different.
I’m not the same person I was a year ago. Neither are you. And neither is our work in this world. Jesus keeps revealing more. And if we look at it, it might amaze, inspire, frighten, or confound us. But it is really only the beginning.