Tuesday: Third Week in Lent Year B

Lent for Everyone
Mark Year B
WEEK 3: TUESDAY...

...I once watched as an angry crowd burnt a Russian flag. Soviet military aircraft had shot down a Korean civilian plane on 1 September 1983, over the Pacific Ocean, on the suspicion that it had been spying. All on board were killed. It was at the height of the cold war, and the plane, which had taken off in the United States, had strayed into Soviet air space, almost certainly because of a computer malfunction. Around the world, not least in the considerable Korean community in Montreal, where I was then living, furious and grieving Koreans gave vent to their feelings. And when there is nobody you can actually attack, burning their flag is a powerfully symbolic way of saying what you think.

Flags are a comparatively modern invention (though ancient armies would carry ‘standards’ that functioned in the same way). In the ancient world, especially in the ancient Jewish world, there were various badges of identity that had a similar function. When you kept certain customs, you were waving the flag and celebrating your national identity. If someone tried to abolish or stamp out those customs, this felt like a kick in the stomach, much as if they had burnt your flag...

Taken from Lent for Everyone Mark Year B by Tom Wright