Faith Daily | 25 May 2021

PRAYER of the DAY - PENTECOST APBA p522

O God, who taught the hearts of your faithful people

by sending to them the light of your Holy Spirit:

grant us by the same Spirit

to have a right judgement in all things,

and evermore to rejoice in his holy comfort;

through the merits of Christ Jesus our Saviour,

who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the same Spirit,

one God, now and for ever.

Amen.

GOSPEL for the Day: Mark 10: 28-31

28 Peter began to say to him, ‘Look, we have left everything and followed you.’ 29Jesus said, ‘Truly I tell you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields, for my sake and for the sake of the good news,30who will not receive a hundredfold now in this age—houses, brothers and sisters, mothers and children, and fields, with persecutions—and in the age to come eternal life. 31But many who are first will be last, and the last will be first.’

GOSPEL Reflection: Contributed by: Glynn Holland-Leam

Comfort and assurance, that is what is offered to the disciples and to us in today’s scripture. Jesus has just told them and others how difficult it is for those who worship money and cleave to it in their lives to find a place at the heavenly banquet, and having heard that people of such means and importance would have such difficulty the disciples are suddenly unsure of their own place. They know what they have done, what they have left behind - but has it been enough? They certainly can’t yet see the advantage at work for them, they still seem to be the type of people coming last in life. Yet Jesus speaks again words that shift the very ground beneath our feet: (to paraphrase) “look closer, what you have given up is bearing fruit already in this age, and will bring you into God’s gift of eternal life in the next.”

Everything is turned upside down at God’s table, we know this through Christ’s words to us in scripture and the presence of the Holy Spirit amongst the people of God. God’s wisdom is not our wisdom, and it changes everything.

FINAL PRAYER: Jim Cotter “Unfolding the Word”

Living Presence,

calling to us again and again in the power of your Spirit,

awaken us to your presence in our midst,

that our hearts may leap with the joy of our Alleluias,

and with the trust of our Amens,

and so be given courage through all that is to come,

after the pattern of Jesus,

alive in us for ever.

Amen