Reflections on Readings Good Shepherd Rosemont

Lectionary Readings (RCL)1

Scripture (JPS) 2 Genesis 9:8-17 - And God said to Noah and to his sons with him, 9 “I now establish My covenant with you and your offspring to come, 10 and with every living thing that is with you—birds, cattle, and every wild beast as well—all that have come out of the ark, every living thing on earth. 11 I will maintain My covenant with you: never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of a flood, and never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth.” God further said, “This is the sign that I set for the covenant between Me and you, and every living creature with you, for all ages to come. 13 I have set My bow in the clouds, and it shall serve as a sign of the covenant between Me and the earth. 14 When I bring clouds over the earth, and the bow appears in the clouds, 15 I will remember My covenant between Me and you and every living creature among all flesh, so that the waters shall never again become a flood to destroy all flesh. 16 When the bow is in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and all living creatures, all flesh that is on earth. 17 That,” God said to Noah, “shall be the sign of the covenant that I have established between Me and all flesh that is on earth.”

Psalm Psalm 125 1-10 Of David. O LORD, I set my hope on You;

2 my God, in You I trust; may I not be disappointed,

1 RCL: The Revised Common Lectionary is the prescribed scripture readings (pericopae) Bible for use in Christian worship, making provision for the liturgical year with its pattern of observances of festivals and seasons. It was preceded by the Common Lectionary, assembled in 1983. It uses a three-year lectionary cycle produced by the Roman Catholic Church following the Second Vatican Council. It is used by most lectionary grounded denominations world-wide.

2 JPS: Hebrew Bible lections are from The Jewish Publication Society’s translation published in 1985.

PAGE 1 may my enemies not exult over me.

3 O let none who look to You be disappointed; let the faithless be disappointed, empty-handed.

4 Let me know Your paths, O LORD; teach me Your ways;

5 guide me in Your true way and teach me, for You are God, my deliverer; it is You I look to at all times.

6 and O LORD, be mindful of Your compassion Your faithfulness; they are old as time.

7 Be not mindful of my youthful sins and transgressions; in keeping with Your faithfulness consider what is in my favor, as befits Your goodness, O LORD.

8 Good and upright is the LORD; therefore He shows sinners the way.

9 He guides the lowly in the right path, and teaches the lowly His way.

10 All the LORD’S paths are steadfast love

for those who keep the decrees of His covenant.

PAGE 2 (NRS) 3 1 Peter 3:18-22

For Christ also suffered for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, in order to bring you to God. He was put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit, 19 in which also he went and made a proclamation to the spirits in prison, 20 who in former times did not obey, when God waited patiently in the days of Noah, during the building of the ark, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were saved through water. 21 And baptism, which this prefigured, now saves you—not as a removal of dirt from the body, but as an appeal to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, 22 who has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God, with angels, authorities, and powers made subject to him.

Gospel Mark 1:9-15 In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. 10 And just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him. 11 And a voice came from heaven, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.” And the Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness. 13 He was in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him. Now after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, 15 and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.”

3 NRS: Lections from the Apostolic Witness are from The New Revised Standard Version translation published in 1987. It is a Protestant translation.

PAGE 3 Reflection

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Why people teach the flood story to children is beyond me. Perhaps they confuse it with a trip to the zoo with cotton candy. But the Noah story does not offer cotton candy. It is about sin and destruction as these two paintings by Abel Pann illustrate. His two other paintings on the Noah story are of the dead bodies that strew the earth that Noah and company would have encountered when the waters receded. Death by drowning is so terrible that the Talmud mandates that every parent teach their children to swim. Of course, that would have been to no avail in this case.

PAGE 5 Further, it is not even the case that Noah and his family were the only righteous people at that time. Scripture says that he was righteous for his time, that is in comparison with others. Ultimately the point of the story is to explain the enmity between the Israelites and the Cannanites that takes up much space later in Scripture. Today’s excerpt from chapter 9 however focuses on the good news it offers: the rainbow that God creates to remind himself that he promised never again to destroy the earth by flood. With the global sea level steadily rising as the seas warm, threatening coastal communities, polar ice caps, ice sheets and glaciers melting causing mud slides and threatening ice-loving animals and the myriad other destructive consequences of global warming now upon us we must implore God to look to the promise behind the rainbow. It is not a leprechaun with a pot of gold but a livable planet despite our sinfulness. The psalm selection accompanying this text seems to get the point of the rainbow covenant.

“O LORD, be mindful of your compassion your faithfulness; they are old as time. Be not mindful of my youthful sins and transgressions; in keeping with your faithfulness consider what is in my favor, as befits your goodness, O LORD. Scripture repeatedly reminds us that we need to remind God of his many promises. Psalm 25 invites prayer and perhaps the concerted effort to tend to matters at hand. This week’s epistolary selection is not from Paul as it usually is but from a disciple of the apostle Peter writing in his name at the end of the first Christian century. (Our day condemns plagiarism, but it was the opposite in biblical times. “Who would read anything written by me?” seems to have been writers’ assumption. Thus, biblical scholars are wary of identifying authors with the names they go by) First Peter is not interested in Genesis 9 but in its Christian symbolism. This water story like that of the crossing of the sea in Exodus are types/symbols of their antitype, Christian baptism. Typological interpretation is a Platonic method of interpretation (deriving from the allegory of the cave in his Republic) that teaches that the original stories are merely shadows, hints that anticipate the true meaning of the story that unfolds in the Apostolic Witness. In this case, the author reminds his readers of their baptism, the inauguration of their spiritual health (salvation).

Now we come to the reading for Lent 1, Mark 1.9-15. We have been hearing from Mark’s first chapter on 7 different Sundays in different lections beginning the second Sunday in Advent 2020. We have read all the verses in today’s lection within those 7 in

PAGE 6 other combinations of verses but not in this particular configuration. Let each reader discern why the lectioneers created this pericope for this week.

Ellen T. Charry 20 February 2020

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