Friday August 6 Pentecost 10
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Psalm 91
Those who shelter under God like a chick beneath its mother’s wings will be safe from all danger and will see how disaster befalls those who put their trust in evil. In the final three verses God is speaking: we are safe because God has decided to be bound to us in love.
The verse about not hurting one’s foot on a stone was applied by the early Christians to Jesus’ temptation in the desert to throw himself off the top of the temple.
Psalm 92
Those who trust in God will be upheld and will flourish like trees with lots of water. Evil will be utterly destroyed. The God who does this is as solid as a rock.
2 Samuel 12: 1-14 What’s Samuel about?
The prophet Nathan now takes on Samuel’s role of confronting the royal abuse of power. Dangerous though it is, Nathan confronts David with his killing of Uriah in order to cover up his adultery with Bathsheba. Nathan confronts David by reporting to him an imaginary story about a rich man who stole a poor man’s only sheep. David is incensed at the cruelty and offence of justice. When Nathan explains that David is the offender, David genuinely repents and God accepts his repentance.
However, even God cannot magically remove consequences, and one of the consequences is that David’s son will die. The child’s death was not understood as punishment of the child for his father’s actions, but of David accepting his role for the consequences of what he had done.
Mark 9: 14-29 What’s Mark about?
Even after experiencing a foretaste of Jesus’ resurrection (in the transfiguration) the disciples are unable to trust Jesus’ insisting that he (and they) must become vulnerable for the kingdom to break in. Now they encounter a distraught father of an epileptic boy who knows he does not trust very much (a better translation of “believe”) and he asks Jesus to help him trust more. In contrast, the disciples do not ask Jesus to help them trust—they want to know how to get the power to throw out the demon. Jesus’ responds that only prayer can do this—he may mean that they don’t trust yet in the power of God to carry them through death into resurrection, and thereby carry the boy through evil into health. Prayer is the way we come to know this startling aspect of God—that only through vulnerability is it possible to love. Even for God.
This week’s collect:
Almighty God,
your Son Jesus Christ fed the hungry
with the bread of his life
and the word of his kingdom.
Renew your people with your heavenly grace,
and in all our weakness
sustain us by your true and living bread,
who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever. Amen.
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