Holy Tuesday
Son of God

It is interesting that the ancient kings of Israel were declared to be the son of God at their coronations. We have a brief snippet of that liturgy in Psalm 2: 7 The LORD said to me, “You are my Son;
today I have begotten you. The angels sometimes were also called sons of God, and the nation of Israel was referred to as the ‘son’ of God by the Prophet Hosea (11:1).

The early Church, almost immediately, after the resurrection of Jesus declared that he was the Son of God. Jesus himself was comfortable with the idea that he was the Son of God in a unique sense. This is seen in two principle ways. First, in the way that he called God ‘Abba’, which was both personal and revolutionary within 1st century Judaism; and second, his statements which indicated that the Father and the Son (Jesus) acted in unity. This is seen across all four gospels (Matthew 11:27, Luke 10:22, Mark 13:32, John 10:30)

Biblical Text – Mark 12:1-12
And he began to speak to them in parables. “A man planted a vineyard and put a fence around it and dug a pit for the wine press and built a tower, and leased it to tenants and went into another country. 2 When the season came, he sent a servant to the tenants to get from them some of the fruit of the vineyard. 3 And they took him and beat him and sent him away empty-handed. 4 Again he sent to them another servant, and they struck him on the head and treated him shamefully. 5 And he sent another, and him they killed. And so with many others: some they beat, and some they killed. 6 He had still one other, a beloved son. Finally he sent him to them, saying, ‘They will respect my son.’ 7 But those tenants said to one another, ‘This is the heir. Come, let us kill him, and the inheritance will be ours.’ 8 And they took him and killed him and threw him out of the vineyard. 9 What will the owner of the vineyard do? He will come and destroy the tenants and give the vineyard to others. 10 Have you not read this Scripture:
“‘The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone;[b]
11 this was the Lord’s doing, and it is marvellous in our eyes’?”
12 And they were seeking to arrest him but feared the people, for they perceived that he had told the parable against them. So they left him and went away.

Questions

1. This parable, in a nutshell, contains a broad sweep of ‘salvation history’. How important is an understanding and appreciation of the Old Testament for the Christian faith?
2. What do you think the term ‘Son of God’ means?
3. When you look at a child, you can often see the parent; what does that fact that Jesus is the unique Son tell us about his ‘father’ God?
4. Would you address God ‘as daddy’?

Reflection for Holy Tuesday

The immortal God hath died for me!
The Father’s co-eternal Son bore all my sins upon the tree;
The immortal God for me hath died
My Lord, my love is crucified
(C) Charles Wesley

Divine and mortal
Fragile and Immortal
Constrained and Expansive
The God in the human
showing us what it means to be human;
so that we might understand the divine