Thursday February 25 Lent 1
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Psalm 50
This psalm imagines God’s response to the people doing evil and abandoning justice. Rather than simply reacting or punishing, God lays out the case as if God were going to court – the idea is that God is being completely fair and getting an unbiased opinion about what the people have done. They have substituted religion for being just and if this continues there will be consequences.
Deuteronomy 9:23 – 10:5
Moses continues to describe God’s deep goodness in the face of Israel’s sin, showing that he persuaded God not to destroy the people and that God even gave him another set of the 10 commandments to guide the people. It was understood that these stone carvings were carried in the ark through the wilderness and eventually placed in the temple in Jerusalem. The meaning of God’s desire to destroy the people is not that God gets angry, but that, amazingly, God continues to be generous in the face of betraying God, which would normally have dreadful consequences. We see the culmination of God’s generosity in Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection.
John 3: 16-21
Jesus speaks of how God’s intention is to fulfill all life. However not everyone responds to this invitation, and some people actively reject it. This was a problem for the early Christians—how could people reject God’s offer of full life? How could they reject the whole point of Jesus? John’s explanation is that people sometimes deliberately choose darkness. John continues this theme throughout his gospel—that we have a choice between choosing full life and choosing disaster. Some choose disaster, but the offer of full life never ceases and when we choose that, we are fulfilled.
This week’s collect:
Almighty God,
whose Son fasted forty days in the wilderness,
and was tempted as we are but did not sin, give us grace to discipline ourselves
in submission to your Spirit,
that as you know our weakness,
so we may know your power to save;
through Jesus Christ our Lord,
who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever. Amen.
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