The Fourth Sunday of Epiphany Year B
Taken from Twelve Months of Sundays Year B
Description
The Fourth Sunday of Epiphany
Deuteronomy 18.15–20
Revelation 12.1–5a
Mark 1.21–28
Authority, so problematic for us, is central to the biblical message. The Kingdom of God is not a democracy, as a character in Chariots of Fire pointed out. When the Israelites banded together to decide things their own way, they voted either to go back to Egypt or to make a golden calf. Almost the only time the apostles acted unanimously was when ‘they all forsook him and fled’. God’s redemptive word of authority, calling us to order, breaks through the noise of humans stampeding in the wrong direction. Admitting this means swallowing pride. Refusing to recognize it means conniving at self-destruction. Lemmings all go together when they go.
And yet. We learnt long ago that power corrupts; we learnt more recently that all authority is to be distrusted. Humanly speaking these are important lessons. Yet one can no more live on suspicion than one can eat a Marxist tract. Without trust breaking through afresh we condemn ourselves to bleak, cynical lives. Trustworthy authority appears, as a strange gift from God, so that we may find the way forward out of our self-imposed prison...
Taken from Twelve Months of Sundays Year B by N T Wright