Wednesday July 21 Pentecost 8
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Psalm 49
Why should I worry about the rich who oppress me? Even the wealthiest person could never pay for their life so that they could live forever. Everyone dies and the rich oppressors are led like sheep to the grave. Why should I be afraid of the wicked when I know they will all die!
Psalm 53
Everyone has abandoned God, and God’s justice. We long for God to restore justice to the world.
1 Samuel 25: 23-44 What’s Samuel about?
Abigail, the wife of the man who had insulted David secretly leaves her husband and takes enormous gifts to David bribing him not to kill her and her husband. David is impressed and pardons her husband. Shortly after, the husband dies and David sees this as God’s punishment for the insult. David then marries Abigail. This will not be the last time that David takes a wife after her husband dies in mysterious circumstances and may suggest that kings with power are dangerous because they do not always act with justice and being so powerful cannot be trusted.
Mark 4: 35-41 What’s Mark about?
Like many miracles, this miracle of Jesus calming a storm is a miracle with a meaning. To people of that time, the waves swamping the boat would have meant the return of chaos over which the Spirit triumphed at the beginning in Genesis. Jesus calming the sea would have meant that God’s original creation was happening again. If the story is set on Lake Galilee, such a storm would have been understood to be the economic disaster common people were experiencing as Herod built an enormous palace near the lake, driving the local people into destitution by over-fishing the lake to finance his palace and also by extorting immense levies on the fishing people to pay for his palace. For Jesus to stop such a storm had clear political implications. We can think of the storms inside us or in the world as being ultimately under God’s control. In tomorrow’s reading, Jesus calms the storm inside a mentally disturbed person.
This week’s collect:
Almighty God,
your Son has opened for us
a new and living way into your presence.
Give us pure hearts and constant wills
to worship you in spirit and in truth;
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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