Text Translation & Prayer of the Day for the Seventh Sunday After Pentecost | July 7, 2024

Friends, it has been a minute since I posted a prayer or a translation. But here you go. A translation of the RCL text this week. I hope it's useful as you prepare for Sunday.

Peace.  

Tom

 

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TEXT | Mark 6:1-6

Having raised the man’s daughter from death’s deep sleep, 

Jesus left the home of that very important religious official. 

Soon, he arrived, in contrast, at his hometown

When the sabbath arrived (as the sabbath does), 

he went to the congregation of his youth. 

There (as one does) he sparked a spiritual dialogue with those in attendance. 

Anger? Amazement? The emotion was unclear. 

Whatever the case, 

many who heard Jesus’ words received them as a gut punch.

“Where did he get this stuff?” they began to ask. 

“And what is this gift of wisdom [σοφία] that he seems to possess?”

“Plus the powerful and the miraculous [δυνάμεις] taking place through his hands!” 

[But very quickly they came to their senses.]

“Is not this the carpenter? The son of Mary and brother of James? And Joses? And Judas? And Simon? And are not his sisters here among us?” 

And they took offense [σκανδαλίζω] at him, receiving him as if he were a stumbling block, a trip-wire, or a stubbed toe, on their otherwise righteous path. 

Then Jesus said to them, “Prophets are not without honor, except in their own country, and among their own people, and in their own families.” 

Aside from laying his hands on a few sick people and curing them, he could perform no miracle there. 

And he was in awe [ἐθαύμασεν] of their un-faith and dis-trust [ἀπιστίαν].

So he wandered around the villages. And he taught there, instead.

PRAYER OF THE DAY | Empire tortures the body and disfigures the mind, O God--so much so, that even the first disciples doubted: How could anything good ever come out of Nazareth? How could messiahs be born of us? How could any child of any God ever look and speak and suffer and sing like me? How could we ever see anything other than unworthiness and inferiority as we glance into the mirror? No wonder Jesus' friends and family doubted. No wonder that we do, too. Save us from such insecurities, O God. Preserve us from building a home among empire's lies. May our foundation, instead, be the heart of your Prophet, whose dream is love lived: in the hungry fed, the lowly lifted, and in the study of war-no-more. Amen.