Sunday August 29 Pentecost 14
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Psalm 148
These three psalms are especially appropriate on Sundays, the mini-anniversary of the resurrection. All creation praises God—the heavens, the earth—including fog, sea monsters, and “creeping things” (perhaps even insects or worms)—and humanity—rulers, young people and old people—all things without exception praise God together. Notice that the sequence is taken from the first creation story in Genesis: first the heavens, then creatures of the water, then creatures of the land, and finally people.
Psalm 149
Songs of joy at God’s victory. The joy of military victories toward the end of the psalm was their way of saying that God has conquered all injustice.
Psalm 150
A scene of riotous joy as every conceivable instrument and every creature praises God.
1 Kings 8: 22-40 What’s Kings about?
Solomon prays at the altar in the temple he has just built that God forgive repentant individuals and the entire people as a whole when they repent. We may be hearing the concerns of the writers five hundred years later who were desperate that God forgive the people for being led astray by their kings and so be released from slavery under the Babylons and be allowed to return to rebuild Solomon’s temple.
John 8: 47-59 What’s John about?
We read from John’s gospel on one more Sunday after today. These critiques of Jesus continue in our own day. Is he a Samaritan, i.e. a foreigner from another time, irrelevant to us? Is he evil, seducing us into passive powerlessness? Has he really been alive as he claims, and will continue to be alive for the whole of history?—that’s impossible, we think. But by deliberately saying “I am” (the name God revealed to Moses) at the end of this passage, Jesus claims his identity is that of God, and therefore in him we see God and if we knew God we would affirm this. When people don’t see God in him, Jesus says, that’s because they have a deficient understanding of God. So, not knowing God, and so not seeing God in Jesus, those who think they know God will try to kill him.
This week’s collect:
Author and Giver of all good things,
graft in our hearts the love of your name,
increase in us true religion,
nourish us in all goodness,
and of your great mercy keep us in the same;
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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