Opening Prayer Series: Collect for 24th Sunday Year B.

The Collect for the 24th Sunday of Year B reads as follows:

Let us pray

Look upon us O God,

Creator and Ruler of all things,

and, that we may feel the working of Your mercy,

grant that we may serve You will all our heart.

Through our Lord Jesus Christ Your Son, 

who lives and reign with You 

in the unity of the Holy Spirit,

One God for ever and ever.

In making this prayer tangible for during the week, the following reflection questions emerged:

1. What does it mean for my life for God to be Creator?
2. What does it mean for my life for God to be ruler?
3. What does God's mercy mean to me?
4. What does it mean to me to serve God with all my heart?
5. What hinders me from serving God with all my heart?
6. How will I change one hinderance this coming week?
7. How am I progressing in my spiritual growth in this Year of Grace.

In today's Gospel we have the first climax in Mark's Gospel which was said in vs 1 of chapter 1-

                                 The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

Jesus is name the Christ, or Messiah. After his death, he will be publically names Son of God.

Jesus first asked what outsiders, people who are not disciples say about Him.  Various answers are given which identify him with great frigures from Israel's past. Then Jesus asks His disciples:

                                             ''But who do you say that I am?''

Peter names Him the Messiah, which means Christ, the anointed by God for the divine task of revealing His power to Israel.  Peter is thinking of the popular expactation of a worldly and political Messiah and is yet to learn what kind of Messiah Jesus really is, and the way He will show Himself as God's Son. 

The teachng which Jesus now begins to give His disciples is about the kind of Messiah He will be and is a formation in the way He wants His disciples to follow.  Peter and the disciples do not understand the prophecy of his death and resurrection that Jesus gives them, since they are fixed on their own popular version of what the Messiah will be.  Jesus rebukes Peter not only for his human thinking, but that he still needs to be formed as a true disciple. He calls him Satan, one who opposed the plans of God.

We too need to answer the question  'But who do you say that I am?''. We need to answer it each day, perhaps several times a day to be a true disciple and remain that way. Every day has its challenges, but if Jesus is truly the Christ, the anointed one to us and is number 1 in our hearts, then we will act accordingly, not by our  own human thinking of what we would like Christ to be.

Let us answer the question 'But who do you say that I am?''. and resolve to be true disciples.