Devotion for the Twenty-Sixth and Twenty-Seventh Days of Lent (LCMS Daily Lectionary)

Above:  The New Jerusalem

Genesis and Mark, Part XXIII: Human and Divine Economics

MARCH 23 and 24, 2023

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Blessed Lord, who caused all holy scriptures to be written for our learning:

Grant us so to hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them,

that we may embrace and ever hold fast the blessed hope of everlasting life,

which you have given us in our Savior Jesus Christ;

who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,

one God, for ever and ever.  Amen.

–The Book of Common Prayer (1979), page 236

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The Assigned Readings:

Genesis 45:1-20, 24-28 (26th Day of Lent)

Genesis 47:1-31 (27th Day of Lent)

Psalm 38 (Morning–26th Day of Lent)

Psalm 22 (Morning–27th Day of Lent)

Psalms 126 and 102 (Evening–26th Day of Lent)

Psalms 107 and 130 (Evening–27th Day of Lent)

Mark 13:1-23 (26th Day of Lent)

Mark 13:24-37 (27th Day of Lent)

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Some Related Posts:

New Every Morning is the Love:

http://gatheredprayers.wordpress.com/2010/07/22/new-every-morning-is-the-love-by-john-keble/

For Social Righteousness:

http://gatheredprayers.wordpress.com/2010/08/06/for-social-righteousness/

O Lord, You Gave Your Servant John:

http://gatheredprayers.wordpress.com/2010/08/06/o-lord-you-gave-your-servant-john/

For the Kingdom of God:

http://gatheredprayers.wordpress.com/2010/09/28/for-the-kingdom-of-god-by-walter-rauschenbusch/

O Day of Peace That Dimly Shines:

http://gatheredprayers.wordpress.com/2010/11/28/o-day-of-peace-that-dimly-shines/

Where Cross the Crowded Ways of Life:

http://gatheredprayers.wordpress.com/2011/06/26/where-cross-the-crowded-ways-of-life/

Prayers:

http://gatheredprayers.wordpress.com/2011/02/06/prayer-for-thursday-in-the-fourth-week-of-lent/

http://gatheredprayers.wordpress.com/2011/02/06/prayer-for-friday-in-the-fourth-week-of-lent/

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In Genesis we read of the family reunion Joseph engineered.  And there is better news:  relocation to fertile land, courtesy of the Pharaoh.  Then there is bad news:  the reduction of Egyptians to slaves of the monarch, courtesy of Joseph.

So Joseph gained possession of all the farm land of Egypt because the famine was too much for them; thus the land passed over to Pharaoh.  And he removed the population town by town, fro one end of Egypt’s borders to the other….

–Genesis 47:20-21, TANAKH:  The Holy Scriptures

And the author of the text does not disapprove.

It is a disturbing and frequently overlooked part of the Bible.

Meanwhile, in Mark 13, which is full of disturbing passages, we read of, among other things, wars, universal hatred, kangaroo courts, family betrayals, imperiled infants, and natural portents.  This is not a chapter one illustrates for children’s Bibles, I suppose.  Yet there is good news after the great eschatatological event:  After God destroys the world or just the current world order, something better will follow.

In this post we have the happy mixed with the disturbing (in Genesis) and the disturbing preceding the happy (in Mark).  Establishing the links between the Old Testament and the New Testament readings has proved more challenging this time, but I do have something to offer you, O reader.  Joseph and the Pharaoh did not create what John of Patmos called the New Jerusalem.  Neither did they make a more just society.  That is what lies on the other side of the great eschatological process in the Bible.  Yet we mere mortals retain the responsibility to act individually and collectively to leave our part of the world better than we found it.  The poor might always be with us, but there can still be less poverty.  There is always enough for everyone to have enough in God’s economy.  May our human economies resemble God’s economy more closely.

KENNETH RANDOLPH TAYLOR

MAY 22, 2012 COMMON ERA

THE FEAST OF RICHARD BIGGS, ACTOR

THE FEAST OF ROTA WAITOA, ANGLICAN PRIEST

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http://blogatheologica.wordpress.com/2013/01/21/genesis-and-mark-part-xxiii-human-and-divine-economics/

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