Thursday September 2 Pentecost 14
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Psalm 37 Part 1
It’s tempting to want to be as successful as evil people, but seeking God’s justice will fulfill us, and God will defeat evil completely.
1 Kings 11: 1-13 What’s Kings about?
Royal injustice deepens—King Solomon marries women from unjust religions and worships their disgusting gods. God will punish Solomon but faithful to God’s covenant, God will wait until after Solomon’s death and will punish subsequent kings. However, God will keep one tribe of Israel faithful and give that tribe to Solomon’s son. This likely reflects the perspective of the writers in whose time the southern tribes were the only ones left after the northern part of the country was captured by Assyrians three hundred years after Solomon.
Mark 15: 12-21 What’s Mark about?
The Roman authority continues the fruitless interrogation but is persuaded to execute Jesus. Early Christians would have been struck by the irony that a violent revolutionary named “Son of the Father” (the meaning of Bar-Abbas) is released, but the true “Son of the Father” who had done no violence is executed. Again there is irony in that the soldiers dress Jesus as their ruler and then humiliate him. A stranger is selected at random to carry the cross-piece of the torture apparatus (The upright parts of crosses were kept standing permanently at the city entrances to remind people of what would happen if they challenged Roman authority.) This man and his family seem to have become well known to the early Christians and may have become early followers even though we hear nothing further of them.
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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