Year B

Jan 27 2025

Scripture Study for

God’s creative power is often expressed in the Bible through the metaphor of God controlling chaotic waters. In Genesis 1, God controls by speaking, while in other places, God must defeat the waters, personified as hostile “sea monsters,” in battle (Psalms 74:12–17; 89:10–12). Here God refers to this creative power in response to the demand that he give an account of himself for Job’s suffering. This response includes the assertion that Job is not capable of comprehending the complexity of the world and how it works, because Job did not have a hand in it. It was God, not humans, who “shut within the doors the sea” and “set limits for it,” stilling its “proud waves.” Only God, in other words, is capable of controlling the chaotic waters.

Paul has just been speaking of the need for perseverance. It is precisely what we do with this life that will determine the nature of our encounter with Christ the Judge. But what really impels Paul is the love of Christ. This is true in both senses: the love shown by Christ in dying for all so that we can become a new creation, and our love for Christ in return, which should lead us to embrace the gift of this new creation. Christians no longer live for themselves, but for the one who transformed them. The gift, in other words, can only be received by loving the giver back and living into the larger purpose for which the gift was given in the first place.

The account of the stormy waters of the Sea of Galilee draws clearly on Ordinary Time images of dangerous, threatening waters that represent personal or social chaos (note, for example, that a psalmist regularly cries out to be saved from drowning or from sinking into the deep, an expression of personal distress and danger). In the Old Testament, it is God alone who saves by controlling chaotic waters, and yet the same is true of Jesus here. The fact that Jesus was asleep during the storm reflects his own faith that the chaos will not prevail, and his questions to his disciples are intended to provoke the same faith in Jesus’ saving power.

Jan 27 2025

Grow—Now!

In the children’s book Frog and Toad Together, Toad admires Frog’s garden. Toad wants to grow flowers too, so Frog gives him some seeds. But, Frog warns him, gardening is hard work. So Toad runs off and puts his seeds in the ground. Then he jumps up and down and shouts for the seeds to begin growing immediately!

As I read that story aloud to my grandson, I chuckled at Toad’s unholy impatience to get his seeds to grow. But then I went outside and saw my bed of carrots. I also wanted to yell at the seeds to start growing immediately. To germinate in our sandy soil, I have to keep them evenly moist for three weeks. Three weeks is a long time to look at bare dirt. I want to shout with Toad, “Come on, already!” Gardening is hard work.

Seed science is extraordinary. Germination is a tenuous process: not all seeds germinate, some rot, some never come up. Under ideal conditions, the seed coat swells with moisture and begins to transform. Two leaves erupt (in a dicotyledon), looking nothing like the hard seed. The tiny plant relies on the food stored within the seed. The dampness of fungus can wilt it. Dryness can kill it. When the second set of leaves erupts, that is a sign that the plant has developed its own root system. It will grow.

Jesus says that the kingdom of God is like the seeds that grow of their own accord. We do not know how the kingdom of God grows. Some days we might want to jump up and down and bellow, “Hey God, get working now!”

We are not in charge of transformation. But we can water. We can tend. In the grace of the Holy Spirit, we work hard while allowing Divine Mystery to be mystery, God to be God.

Consider/Discuss

It is hard to wait. Sometimes we want to jump up and down and shout, “Hey God, get going!” We want to be in control. We want to make things happen already. How do excess worry, unproductive fretting, and unholy impatience reflect our lack of trust? On the other hand, how does a healthy dose of concern keep us watering and tending? Where is the fine line between the two?
Just because the kingdom of God is a mystery does not suggest that we be lazy, settle for mediocrity, or excuse ourselves, in our efforts to further the Kingdom. Soil conditions are up to us. If we offer too heavy a clay, too shady a spot, and give too much or too little water, seeds can die. We are partners with God in the growth of the Kingdom. What tending does God want me to do today?

Living and Praying with the Word

Lord, your friend St. Paul tells us that we feel far from you while we are in this human body. We have to walk by faith because we do not see you. And yet you are also here. You are a constant gardener, present among us, planting and reaping in ways that we do not see or know. Even as we jump up and down in fret and worry, grant us the grace of inner calm that all will be well. We are willing to work to make your kingdom come. But only you can make it happen. Help us to trust in your timing.

Jan 27 2025

Scripture Study for

Just before today’s reading, Ezekiel speaks a prophecy about the divinely ordained exile of the Davidic king to Babylon, in which a great eagle plucks the crest of a cedar and transplants it (17:1– 4). But now the new Davidic king has appealed to Egypt for help against Babylon, attempting in effect to circumvent the divine plan of judgment against Judah. Now God affirms that divine power alone “will take from the crest of the cedar” and plant it. In other words, not the Davidic kings but God will rebuild the dynasty, and only after the time of judgment ends. It is God, not the kings, who raises up and brings down, who withers and who restores life. The oracle both affirms God’s plans for restoration and warns that only God will carry it out.

In his letter to the Corinthians, Paul is pondering the fact that discipleship brings with it many trials, yet these same hardships “produce for us an eternal weight of glory” (4:17). While we are in our earthly bodies, we can only groan in anticipation of this glory (5:1–5). This is why we must be courageous; although we are now “away from the Lord,” this is only temporary, a truth that can only be discerned in faith. This distance from the Lord must not lead us to falter in our discipleship, because in time we will appear before Christ, who will judge us precisely on what we have done during our time “in the body.”

Jesus gives two parables to explain the mysterious nature of the kingdom of God, both drawn from the natural world and focusing on the hidden process by which plants grow, which human beings cannot control. There is something inherent within the grain and the mustard plant that allows them to grow, in their own time and manner, independent of human will or power. At the same time, humans are involved in the process by sowing the seeds in the first place. The parables suggest that while the kingdom is indeed God’s, and cannot be manipulated by humans, human action is nevertheless part of the dynamic of the growth of the Kingdom.

Jan 27 2025

Cleansed (?) by the Blood

“Moses took the blood and sprinkled it on the people? Yuck . . . gross.” Her face wrinkled with disgust. As I looked around the room, all of their faces said the same. Sacrifice and the splashing of blood and the slaughter of heifers and goats; the ninth-grade girls whom I taught had no cultural framework for that use of blood. “That’s repulsive,” they grimaced.

We talk about “the bread” on this feast day. But what about “the blood”?

The Hebrews sacrificed an animal for its blood. Blood was life. Life was from God. Sprinkling with blood was to purify, to set things right, to atone for sin. To sin meant to throw things out of kilter, to break a relationship, to miss the mark of what we should be or do, to sever a bond. So the blood was for cleaning things up. But why did they need to do that?

At the core of Jewish theology is the “bigness” of God. God is untouchable. God is inaccessible. The God who is holy is so pure that sin cannot even be looked upon. We who are sinful, therefore, have no access to the Almighty. The atonement of blood made things right again when people messed up and strayed. Think of the psalms: “Create in me a clean heart, O God.”

The reading from Hebrews also talks about this cleansing of blood. But goat and bull blood are temporary. Jesus shed his own blood so that we would be made clean eternally; clean so that we could draw near to God. He said, “This is my blood,” then took a cup, and they all drank from it. Did they, like those teenagers, maybe . . . gag a little?

Consider/Discuss:

“Wash up for dinner,” my grandmother used to say. I can still hear her words. “Wash up for dinner;” whenever we say the words, “I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof” Jesus says back to us that we will be healed—also made clean, restored, and sanctified. Have we grown so accustomed to that cleansing of Jesus’ blood that we don’t think about it? Does it (or should it) unsettle us a little bit?
When our image of God grows inordinately small, almost teddy bear–like, we can become presumptuous, as though we ask, God is so nice, how could we not “get through?” What happens to our worldview if we grow blasé about the “bigness” of God? What does that do to reverence and awe?

Living and Praying with the Word

Jesus, Blood of cleansing, you have opened the way for us to be holy. You came to make things right. Yet we are still broken. We still mess up. Life knocks us around. Life knocks around those we love. Wash us this day with your Blood, for we want to be healers as well. You who are infinite have chosen to dwell among us. Let us not take you for granted. Come, Lord Jesus; bring us into your presence, so that we can bring you to others.

Jan 27 2025

Scripture Study for

As Israel enters into a covenant relationship with the God who has delivered them from bondage in Egypt, Moses calls upon the people to affirm that they will be faithful to their God, which means— among other things—to be loyal and obedient, observing all of the covenant expectations (especially the Ten Commandments). In the ancient Near East, and so also in ancient Israel, solemn covenants were sealed by sacrifice and blood from the sacrificed animal was sprinkled on both parties. Here, the people are sprinkled with blood along with the altar itself, which represents God. This blood, which binds the two parties into a relationship of mutual loyalty, is thus the “blood of the covenant.”

The central theme of the Letter to the Hebrews is the priesthood of Christ. Formerly, the high priest, as representative of the people, would enter the tabernacle to offer sacrifice to God. This earthly tabernacle was considered an analog to the divine, heavenly dwelling. Some of the sacrifices were instituted to cleanse Israel of the effects of sin through the sprinkling of the blood of the sacrificed animals, an act that had to be repeated regularly. Christ, the eternal High Priest, has rendered all of this obsolete by entering into the actual heavenly sanctuary, offering himself in sacrifice, and cleansing away sin with his own blood. Because he is the Son of God, this action surpasses all others in quality and effect.

In Mark, the Last Supper is held on the evening ushering in the feast of Passover, when the lambs were slaughtered. The blood of the Passover lamb in Exodus protected the Israelites from death, and the lamb itself was eaten. Here, Jesus offers his own body to be shared by the disciples and his own blood as “my blood of the covenant,” a reference to the blood of the sacrificial animal of the covenant at Sinai. Thus he draws on two traditions of sacrifice, both closely related to the Exodus, to articulate the meaning of his own imminent death, which both saves from death and seals a new covenant between God and humanity.