Patrick Comerford
We are in Ordinary Time in the Church Calendar. Ash Wednesday and the beginning of Lent are now less than two weeks away (5 March 2025).
Before this day begins, I am taking some quiet time this morning to give thanks, to reflect, to pray and to read in these ways:
1, today’s Gospel reading;
2, a short reflection;
3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary;
4, the Collects and Post-Communion prayer of the day.
Mark 8: 27-33 (NRSVA):
27 Jesus went on with his disciples to the villages of Caesarea Philippi; and on the way he asked his disciples, ‘Who do people say that I am?’ 28 And they answered him, ‘John the Baptist; and others, Elijah; and still others, one of the prophets.’ 29 He asked them, ‘But who do you say that I am?’ Peter answered him, ‘You are the Messiah.’ 30 And he sternly ordered them not to tell anyone about him.
31 Then he began to teach them that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again. 32 He said all this quite openly. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. 33 But turning and looking at his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said, ‘Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.’
Today’s Reflection:
Today’s Gospel reading (Mark 8: 27-33) is set on the road between Bethsaida and the villages of Caesarea Philippi, in today’s Golan Heights.
We read yesterday Saint Mark’s story of an unnamed blind man who is healed gradually at Bethsaida (Mark 8: 22-26), but is warned against going ‘even … into the village.’ In today’s reading, after Simon Peter’s confession of faith, You are the Messiah’, the disciples are warned sternly not to tell anyone about is said. When Simon Peter then challenges Jesus’ teaching, he is rebuked sternly and told, ‘Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.’
Saint Peter is so like me. He trips and stumbles constantly. He often gets it wrong, even later on in life. He gives the wrong answers, he comes up with silly ideas, he easily stumbles on the pebbles and stones that are strewn across the pathway of life. But eventually, it is not his own judgment, his own failing judgment, that marks Peter out as someone special. It is his faith, his rock solid faith.
What did Peter believe in?
What did Peter not believe in?
After this experience, Peter must have thought again about what he needed to speak out about and needed to reexamine his beliefs once again.
It is one month today since the inauguration of Donald Trump as President of the United States in Washington on 20 January 2025. Since then, many of us, I am sure, have had to reexamine our beliefs, our commitments, and to ask once again when we need to speak out and what we need to strength to speak out.
At the Founder’s Day Eucharist with USPG and SPCK in Saint James’s Church, Piccadilly, earlier this week, we used this Affirmation of Faith, adapted from a church in Indonesia:
All: I believe in God, who is love and who has given the earth to all people.
I believe in Jesus Christ, who came to heal us, and to free us from all forms of oppression.
I believe in the Spirit of God, who works in and through all who are turned towards truth.
I believe in the community of faith, which is called to be at the service of all people.
I believe in God’s promise to finally destroy the power of sin in us all, and to establish the kingdom of justice and peace for all humankind.
People to the Leader’s Right: I do not believe in the right of the strongest, nor the force of arms, or the power of oppression.
People to the Leader’s Left: I believe in the rights of the weak, in the solidarity of all people, in the power of non-violence.
People to the Leader’s Right: I do not believe in racism, sexism or casteism, in the power that comes from wealth and privilege, or in any established order that enslaves.
People to the Leader’s Left: I believe that all of God’s children are equally human, that order based on violence and injustice is not order.
People to the Leader’s Right: I do not believe that war and hunger are inevitable and peace unattainable.
People to the Leader’s Left: I believe in the beauty of simplicity, in love with open hands, in peace on earth.
All: I do not believe that suffering need be in vain, that death is end, that the disfigurement of the world is what God intended. But I dare to believe, always and in spite of everything, in God’s power to transform and transfigure, fulfilling the promise of a new heaven and a new earth where justice and peace will flourish. Amen.
Despite all his human failings, despite his often-tactless behaviour, despite all his weaknesses, despite all the denials, Peter is able to say who Christ is for him. He has a simple but rock-solid faith, summarised in that simple, direct statement: ‘You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God’. It does not matter that Saint Peter was capable of some dreadful gaffes and misjudgements. I am like that too … constantly. But Christ calls us in our weaknesses. And in our weaknesses, he finds our strengths.
Today’s Prayers (Thursday 20 February 2025):
The theme this week in ‘Pray With the World Church’, the Prayer Diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), is ‘The Struggle for Indigenous Land Rights in Brazil.’ This theme was introduced on Sunday with a Programme Update by the Revd Dr Rodrigo Espiúca dos Anjos Siqueira, Coordinator of the Department of Advocacy, Human, Environmental and Territorial Rights of the Anglican Diocese of Brasília. Pastor of Espírito Santo Parish, Novo Gama, Goiás.
The USPG Prayer Diary today (Thursday 20 February 2025, World Day of Social Justice) invites us to pray:
We pray that churches, faith communities and religious organisations will discover their role in eliminating injustice and defending the rights of the most vulnerable.
The Collect:
Almighty God,
who alone can bring order
to the unruly wills and passions of sinful humanity:
give your people grace
so to love what you command
and to desire what you promise,
that, among the many changes of this world,
our hearts may surely there be fixed
where true joys are to be found;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.
The Post-Communion Prayer:
Merciful Father,
who gave Jesus Christ to be for us the bread of life,
that those who come to him should never hunger:
draw us to the Lord in faith and love,
that we may eat and drink with him
at his table in the kingdom,
where he is alive and reigns, now and for ever.
Additional 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.
Yesterday’s Reflection
Continued Tomorrow
Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Edition copyright © 1989, 1995, National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org
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