| Epiphany 3 | | Date Created: Jan 21, 2006, 07:18 AM |
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The Gospel reading for this coming Sunday is Mark 1:14-20.
I've used these verses as a springboard for a piece of writing elsewhere. What happened was that I started to think about Zebedee himself and trace through the gospels the things said about his family. For it wasn't just his boys who left him behind in the boat, their mother becomes one of the women who follow and support Jesus. On the road to Jerusalem, she speaks up and asks Jesus if they can sit on his right and left hands, remember? And we find her among the women in Jerusalem in the passion narrative.
Jesus not only takes them away from their home and their dad, but he (deliberately?) seems to over-write Zeb's memory. The boys start out being known as the sons of Zebedee, but Jesus will rename them. Before too long he rechristens them the sons of Thunder instead.
This week's epistle-reading (1 Cor 7:29-31) is also a bald and harsh statement of the need to rearrange priorities now in light of the urgency of the final truth. Even a committed Christian (in the West) will find these difficult passages to bear. |
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