Friday May 28 Pentecost
Click here for simplified daily office prayers
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.
Deuteronomy 5: 1-22 What’s Deuteronomy about?
Moses reads the Ten Commandments to the people. The overwhelming experience of God (which terrified the people) is not just a sign of God’s physical power but of being in the presence of the demand for absolutely just living.
The first three commandments say that there are to be no other priorities than justice. We are not to worship idols because idols are projections of our own self which we use to make ourselves the centre of everything. We are not to abuse God’s name—the origin of using “God” in a swear word is to use God as a power to get control over other people to get what we selfishly want. The fourth commandment is that every week we are to set aside a full day in which we put into practice God’s original creation which allows no slavery—neither of people nor of animals. Even foreigners are to be treated as equals. The following five commandments describe specific acts of justice for others. The last commandment requires justice in our attitudes: it is self-destructive to covet—to deliberately long for selfish ownership of a person or some thing—even if we do not carry out that desire, because to allow ourselves to want something absolutely destroys our ability to be just.
Like the Israelites, we are in awe, and perhaps terror, at this absolute demand for a life of justice because, in honesty, we admit how far we are from that life of justice, which we know to be life-giving and true. Yet in the second commandment God speaks of forgiving people for thousands of generations. God’s commitment to us is not destroyed by our breaking the commandments. That astonishing insight, coming as a result of their release from Babylon, was the foundation for the Israelites’ unique understanding of God.
Luke 16: 10-18 What’s Luke about?
Jesus critiques social norms about wealth.
Then, as now, wealth was assumed to be a blessing by God for an ethical life, but Jesus asserts that we cannot simultaneously have priorities of both wealth and justice (which is to “serve God”). The implication for wealthy religious leaders is immediately obvious and they object, but Jesus won’t back off his judgment that greed is incompatible with justice. “Entering heaven by force” is the motivation to prove that God loves me because my wealth demonstrates it—Jesus says the tiniest vowel dot in traditional Hebrew holy script describing the call to justice, is more important than the entire universe. It’s one of Jesus’ typical and deliberate exaggerations—the tiniest dot of justice is more important than selling the entire universe.
Jesus’ uncompromising statement about divorce has a meaning not obvious today—Jesus is rejecting unfettered male power in an age in which men could divorce women on a whim.
This week’s collect:
Almighty and everliving God,
who fulfilled the promises of Easter
by sending us your Holy Spirit
and opening to every race and nation
the way of life eternal,
keep us in the unity of your Spirit,
that every tongue may tell of your glory;
through Jesus Christ our Lord,
who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever. Amen.
Click here to share a comment on the web site.