Friday April 23 Easter 3
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Psalm 31
I am being attacked from all sides but trust that God will rescue me. In Luke’s gospel, Jesus quotes from this psalm as he is dying. Appropriate for Friday as the weekly mini-anniversary of the crucifixion.
Daniel 6: 1-15 What’s Daniel about?
Daniel is on track to become the second in command to the king. Notice the similarity to Joseph’s story, who became the second in command to Pharaoh in the Israelites’ ancient past and who also interpreted the king’s dreams. Babylonian rivals who know Daniel’s faithfulness to the God of justice, persuade Darius to issue an irreversible edict that any person who worships anyone other than the king must be eaten by lions. When Daniel continues to worship the Israelite God, he is denounced to Darius who attempts to find a way to avoid killing Daniel.
This kind of pressure would have been experienced first hand by those living under Greek and Roman rule not long before the birth of Jesus.
Luke 5: 12-26 What’s Luke about?
Jesus does the unthinkable—he touches a leper, and the leper is cured. The touch of love so often cures us. Jesus become famous, but avoids popularity.
Next, some people express enormous trust and determination by carrying a paralyzed friend up onto the roof of a house so as to lower him down near Jesus who was inaccessible from the ground because of the crowds. In response to the friends, Jesus forgives the man for his sins (it was commonly believed that sin caused disease). Jesus critiques the religious leaders who want to deny this new freedom from sin and guilt in order to keep their own power over curing disease. Jesus completes the man’s freedom by sending him away in full health.
This week’s collect:
O God,
your Son made himself known to his disciples
in the breaking of bread.
Open the eyes of our faith,
that we may see him in his redeeming work,
who is alive and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever. Amen.
Ray Spreier. Jared Talbot, Ann Trost, Lou Joyce Wilding,
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