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4^th SUNDAY AFTER EPIPHANY

The lessons for this week focus on the centrality of the Word and the Christian community, a Word which leads worshipers to knowledge and loving service.   A word which carries authority to confront that which confuses and obtrudes God’s mission of love and healing.

Deuteronomy 18:15-20-A Faithful Mouth and Attentive Ears

Much of the book of Deuteronomy seeks to guide its listeners into right living or the life that is good. Verse 17 helps to set our lesson in perspective: "You must be blameless before the Lord you God." Much of what follows provide specific guidance on how one can live blamelessly before God. In this lesson God promises to raise up a Moses-like prophet from among the community at the behest of the people (Dt. 5:23-3). A warning to listeners and prophets closes the lesson: the people are to be attentive to the word of the prophet and the prophet is to speak only what God speaks.

1 Corinthians 8:1-13-The New Ethic of Christian Community

Knowledge and its concomitant freedom stand in tension with love and service in the epistle lesson. Behind the text is an incomplete and thus, inadequate teaching on Christian freedom that results from Christian gnosis-knowledge-that liberated some Corinthian recipients from superstition. While not refuting directly their slogan, Paul creates tension by suggesting two hypothetical "what if’s" that would render such knowledge as counterproductive to the larger Christian ethic of love. Christians without the knowledge that idols are mere nothings, for instance, and who happen to view "liberated" Christians eating meat that has been idol-blessed, could become confused or even destroyed when they assay to do the same without such knowledge. So Paul brings one other factor into the gnosis equation: agape. "Knowledge puffs up, but love edifies, Paul says.

Mark 1:21-28-A New Teaching-and With Authority!

With his baptism in the Jordan River by John, Jesus begins an astonishing and powerful ministry that peels back layer by layer of the kingdom ruled by evil powers. In this gospel lesson, Mark provides a gripping and unsettling confrontation between the two realms of authority: Jesus vis-à-vis an evil spirit that has demonized a worshiper at Capernaum. The setting is a worship service in the local synagogue, but the service shifts from the normal to the paranormal as the demonized worshiper comes under the spell of evil. Though the questions raised by the demon suggests knowledge of Jesus’ identify, Jesus refutes and muzzles it. The response to this word of power is one of astonishment by all and everyone: a new teaching-and with authority!