Collect:
God of heaven,
you send the gospel to the ends of the earth
and your messengers to every nation:
send your Holy Spirit to transform us
by the good news of everlasting life
in Jesus Christ our Lord.

Comment
Where did the idea of a ‘messiah’ come from? (‘Messiah’ means ‘anointed one’, usually thought of as a king who had been anointed with oil like the great king David.) The verses from Deuteronomy were certainly very important, although they do not mention anointing. The passage looks forward to the coming of a prophet who will pass on to the people any message from God – they would not hear his voice directly, but only indirectly through prophets. It goes on to say that it was just as important to listen to the prophet as it was to listen to God. The passage ends with a warning against false prophets. However, the most striking thing is the talk about a prophet ‘like Moses’ – and that’s where it links in to the ideas of a messiah.
Moses was a perfect example of a messiah, even though he was never physically anointed. He was, first of all, a Saviour, leading the people of Israel out of slavery in Egypt. He was a Leader, whom everybody had to follow. Although there were several rebellions against his leadership, God made it very plain that Moses was his appointed leader.
Moses was the law-giver, passing on to the people laws from God which governed their moral life, their religious activities (including the place of worship, the priesthood and the sacrificial system), and also their day to day lives as a nation and as individuals. As law-giver and leader Moses was the judge, the final court of appeal. But the most remarkable thing about Moses was the fact that he spoke to God face to face.
In Numbers 12:6-8 God says this:
‘When there are prophets of the LORD among you, I reveal myself to them in visions, I speak to them in dreams. But this is not true of my servant Moses; he is faithful in all my house. With him I speak face to face, clearly and not in riddles; he sees the form of the LORD.’
The prophet to come was going to be like Moses – and that meant he was going to be very special indeed. From the time of the Exile the Jews were a subject people, apart from a few years at the time of the Maccabees, until the establishment of the nation of Israel in 1948. The idea of a prophet like Moses, with a hot-line to God and the task of bringing about a second Exodus from slavery, was very appealing indeed.
When Jesus appeared on the scene the question at the back of everybody’s mind was whether or not he was the coming Messiah. Although he did not fit their expectations – a carpenter’s son from Nazareth wasn’t what they were looking for – there was a lot about him that made them look twice.
First, there was Jesus’ teaching. It was new – not because he contradicted the Scriptures (our Old Testament) but because he shed new light on them. The teachers and preachers of the time explained the Scriptures usually by quoting learned rabbis of the past. Jesus did not do that. He spoke with authority, as if he knew at first hand exactly what was in God’s mind. Interestingly, Mark does not say what Jesus taught; we can assume that it was related to his message in verse 17, ‘The time has come, the kingdom of God is near, repent and believe the good news.’
Then there was Jesus’ actions. The people in those days were familiar with demon possession, and there were exorcists who sought to help the patient with medicines (poisonous roots) or through making sacrifices.
Jesus just told the demons to go, and they went – they recognised his authority. The people noticed it too, and were amazed. They tied it in with his teaching: he seemed to be speaking and acting with an authority from – where?
Jesus had authority over spiritual beings (demons), every kind of disease, material things like water (turned into wine), bread and fish (multiplied), and the forces of nature (wind and waves). Today he has authority over everything in heaven and on earth. But, just as then, he will not use his authority to enforce obedience. We have to decide for ourselves how much we will obey.

Questions
1) What authority does Jesus have in your life? Are there any ‘no go areas’?
2) How can we make familiar teaching more fresh and relevant?




Collect:
Eternal God,
whose Son went among the crowds
and brought healing with his touch:
help us to show his love,
in your Church as we gather together,
and by our lives as they are transformed
      into the image of Christ our Lord.

Comment
Jesus had given Paul the task of spreading the gospel, the good news of his salvation, around the Roman empire. Paul knew that when Jesus told him to do something, he had to obey – Jesus was the Lord; so he had no option but to go around telling people the good news of Jesus. He knew that he could have expected those who responded to his message to support him with hospitality and expenses – a few sentences earlier in this letter he had quoted Jesus’ command that those who preach the gospel should make their living from it. But, unlike all the other apostles, he had decided to earn his own living and to preach without asking for support. He expected no credit from preaching the good news; that was just obeying orders. He did expect a reward for doing it for free – but the reward was not so much payment from God as the joy of presenting glad tidings without any strings attached.
Paul was completely captivated by the good news of Jesus, and had devoted his life to spreading it far and wide. All he wanted was to ‘win’ people, to bring them into the kingdom of God by helping them to accept Jesus as the Lord and Saviour of their lives. That was no easy task. His own people, the Jews, had their laws and culture and way of life, and he had to be accepted as one of them in order to get a hearing. The Gentiles had a very different culture, and he had to become equally at home in their company, without lessening his commitment to Jesus and his ways. The ‘weak’ were probably people with a ‘weak conscience’ who abstained from all sorts of things. They too needed to be helped into God’s kingdom, and Paul would also abstain from the things they were concerned about so that there would be no obstacle to the good news. ‘I have become all things to all people so that by all possible means I might save some’ (v.22).
Despite this single-minded dedication to the gospel, Paul did not adopt a ‘holier-than-thou’ attitude. He was not above the people he was talking to but on the same level, needing the same forgiveness and acceptance from God that he encouraged them to believe in. He made all his sacrifices in order to promote the good news of Jesus, so that he might ‘share in its blessings’. He did not presume that he had reached the goal. In the next few sentences of the letter he talked about athletes training for a race; he was just as serious about the race of life, he had to be just as self-disciplined in order to gain the prize.
He knew that it is easy for us to slacken off in our spiritual journeys and take things easy; and that by so doing we might lose our way, or simply not finish. In the next chapter he told the Corinthians not to rely on the fact that they’d been baptized and received Holy Communion and belonged to the church community. What matters is our relationship with Jesus Christ, and cannot just be taken for granted. As with all relationships, our relationship with God needs time and attention!
Paul wanted to bring the good news to all kinds of people. In doing so he was following the example of Jesus, who did not want to stay in one place only, but to preach in all the villages around. That was why he was sent!

Questions
1) What has Jesus called you to be and to do? How are you getting on?
2) How important is it to you that others hear the good news of Jesus?
What more should we be doing?




Collect:
Almighty God,
give us reverence for all creation
and respect for every person,
that we may mirror your likeness
in Jesus Christ our Lord.



Collect:
Holy God,
you know the disorder of our sinful lives:
set straight our crooked hearts,
and bend our wills to love your goodness
      and your glory
in Jesus Christ our Lord.



Collect:
Holy God,
our lives are laid open before you:
rescue us from the chaos of sin
and through the death of your Son
bring us healing and make us whole
in Jesus Christ our Lord.



Collect:
Heavenly Father,
your Son battled with the powers of darkness,
and grew closer to you in the desert:
help us to use these days to grow in wisdom and prayer
that we may witness to your saving love
in Jesus Christ our Lord.



Collect:
Almighty God,
by the prayer and discipline of Lent
may we enter into the mystery of Christ's sufferings,
and by following in his Way
come to share in his glory;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.



Collect:
Eternal God,
give us insight
to discern your will for us,
to give up what harms us,
and to seek the perfection we are promised
in Jesus Christ our Lord.



Collect:
God of love,
passionate and strong,
tender and careful:
watch over us and hold us
all the days of our life;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.



Collect:
Gracious Father,
you gave up your Son
out of love for the world:
lead us to ponder the mysteries of his passion,
that we may know eternal peace
through the shedding of our Saviour's blood,
Jesus Christ our Lord.