Wednesday March 17 Lent 4
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Psalm 101
I am determined to live a life of justice and not to support exploitation.
Psalm 109
A desperate plea for God’s assistance, and rejoicing that God is faithful to the poor. The middle section, which uses violent images against those who oppress the powerless, expresses a profound desire that oppression be removed from the world. At the conclusion the writer rejoices that God is committed to the needy and to protecting those who are unjustly accused.
Jeremiah 18: 1-11
Jeremiah is told to go to a potter who forms a pot out of wet clay, but when the pot becomes mis-shaped the potter re-forms it into another shape. In the same way, God claims to be a potter who can change the shape of history in any way God wants depending on how the people act. It is up to the people to make justice their priority, then the resulting shape of the nation will be very good.
John 6: 27-41
John continues the conversation about food, which began with Jesus’ miraculous feeding of a huge crowd. In their journey through the wilderness God miraculously fed the Israelites with manna and some of that manna was still kept in the temple. Jesus claims to be the food for feeding of all people in their modern wilderness so that everyone will have full life. Jesus asserts that he himself is a far more important food than manna. This claim to be of greater importance than a central Old Testament experience was sacrilegious and dangerous.
Discussions about whether Jesus is more important than manna likely don’t seem very important to us. But the implication is that even though God has fed us in important ways in the past, Jesus’ death and resurrection will feed us more deeply and can make everyone fully alive.
This week’s collect:
Almighty God,
through the waters of baptism
your Son has made us children of light.
May we ever walk in his light
and show forth your glory in the world;
through Jesus Christ our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever. Amen.
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