Saturday February 27 Lent 1
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Psalm 55
I am terrified at what is happening. The city is full of corruption and my dear familiar friend has betrayed me. I will not cease imploring God to intervene and put things right.
Appropriate for a Saturday, when Jesus, betrayed by friends, waits in silence in the grave.
Deuteronomy 11: 18-28
As the Israelites are about to enter the land God promised them, Moses says that God’s laws, which amount to doing justice to all, must not be simply rules to follow, but must be the guiding principles of their whole life. If they do that, they will live more fully than they can imagine. Some Jews still wear the laws on their foreheads and inscribe them on their doorposts as Moses commands.
In Lent we are in the same position—preparing to leave the wilderness world dominated by fear and greed, and enter into God’s promised kingdom of generosity and security and full life.
This concludes our reading of Moses’ exhortations before he dies: that when the people receive God’s promises of a settled life full of abundance they must not risk it by abandoning God’s priority of justice for all. We read this because it is equally true in our time.
John 4: 1-26
Jesus travels through the Samaritan territory, north of Jerusalem, where the Jewish people were despised by other Jews as traitors for believing that their temple on Mount Gerizim was the location of Abraham’s near-sacrifice of his son and not the temple in Jerusalem, as they still do today.
As is typical in John’s gospel, Jesus’ significance is explored through extensive conversations about some incident, using multiple levels of meaning. We will explore this story over the next three days.
With unbelievable generosity and at risk of being suspected of impure motives, Jesus meets privately with a woman of those despised tribes—an unheard-of and risky act. His respect for her as a woman, his intimacy in asking for water, his compassion about her chaotic personal life, and his acceptance of her faith astound her. This meeting will change her life. Jesus presents himself as running water—”living water” in the translation.
John is inviting us to have the same experiences of Jesus. Lent is the time to allow that to happen.
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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