Saturday after Ash Wednesday Year B

Lent for Everyone
Mark Year B
SATURDAY AFTER ASH WEDNESDAY...

...Part of the fun of learning to read is learning to listen for echoes. If you were browsing in a bookshop and saw a novel with the title Pride, Prejudice and Passion, you would recognize at once that the author was echoing Jane Austen’s novel Pride and Prejudice. If you were a Scottish football supporter and saw a headline saying ‘Old Firm up to New Tricks’, you would know at once that this referred to some new controversy involving the ‘Old Firm’, the two great Glasgow clubs, Rangers and Celtic. And if you switched on the television and heard the announcer describing a new series in which people were determined ‘to boldly go’ somewhere exotic or dangerous, you would recognize the echo of Star Trek. This echo recognition functions at every level of writing and speaking. The evidence suggests that it has
always done so, ever since humans spoke and wrote words.

Part of the excitement of learning to read the Bible is listening for the echoes that one text sets up when it refers back to another – which the author assumes, or hopes, that you will already know...

Taken from Lent for Everyone Mark Year B by Tom Wright